Eternity Drifting
by Kasei-no-hime
Summary: Bored of her immortal life on Earth, Kaguya Houraisan decides to board the mining ship Red Dwarf in hopes of regaining an interest in life by exploring deep space. But when she exits stasis after a radiation leak wipes out the entire crew, she's left only with her fellow immortal, Fujiwara no Mokou, and an AI version of her mentor, Eirin Yagokoro, to drift together in space forever
1. Awakening

Kaguya became conscious to the sound of air rushing into a small white room. _Depressurisation_ , she thought, surprising herself with that knowledge. _Where am I ?_ White walls, blinding white light. She thought of the lunar capital, then quickly rejected that thought like it disgusted her. _Not there._ The air was rushing in through the opening doorway, splitting open like an elevator arriving at its destination, a shell being painfully prised open, forcing her back into the world. She felt groggy, tired, despite having no memory of what she'd been doing over the past… _how long ?_ She shook the thought away. Time had no real meaning for her anyway. A gap in her memory was no real loss. It was that much time less that she actually had to remember living through, time that she didn't have to carry the memories of with her like baggage. It was most likely a good thing.

The sliding doors came to a halt with a clank; the white light now less blinding (or was it her eyes getting used to it ?), she could see the corridor before her. A white-grey metal tube extending outwards, dividing itself, interrupted only by the occasional pulsing diode. Dead silence. She stepped out of the room ( _her_ room ?), relinquishing the safety she somehow felt it offered her. Her ballerina shoes (old fashioned, noble-looking; alien against the cold steel floor) made a soft tapping sound with every step she took. They echoed horribly far. _Alone…?_

Aimless, she wandered down the corridors, turning left or right at random as they seemed to wind on forever. Images of her being digested by a giant mechanical beast surfaced in her mind. A soft, bitter laugh escaped her lips at the thought. _In a way, it wouldn't be much different, if I was eaten alive. The whole time, I'd also be confused, conscious, until I was shat out, intact, at the other end. Indigestible. Nothing in this universe can stomach me._ During the minutes of quasi-silence later, she wondered where the "other end" was, where the anus of these entrails would be. She didn't want to wander these corridors for much longer. _Maybe, go back to the white room ? Then what ?_

She was lost, despite her lack of destination. She felt like she could remember something, but there was still a screen of fog in her brain preventing her; deep down, she knew why she was here, the corridors even felt familiar somehow, (was it a good kind of familiar ? She was unsure) but she couldn't quite access the memories. _Frustrating._ She had often wished she could do away with memories, but now, it was a loss of control that she resented.

And then, she wandered into a room with a massive window on one wall : in a glance, the fog around her memories was blown away.

Sprawled out in front of her was an infinite darkness, tarnished only by tiny specks of light covering it like a rash. It was a sight she was very familiar with. Her first thought was _home;_ the view reminded her of her time on the moon. But "home" repulsed her, it had rejected her. Found her indigestible. She felt no homesickness, she wouldn't have returned there if she could. She hated herself for still having thoughts of it as _home,_ even after all these years (how many was it, now ? That was a different life, back then. A different person.). She had no home. Nowhere to consider home.

Her second thought was of the night sky from Gensokyo, the place where she had lived (stayed, existed) for so long. This wasn't it. This was much more vivid, more present, closer. She had spent millennia looking up at the night sky, burning every pinprick of light into her retinas. Knowing she'd end up drifting amongst them, one day. Her _short-lived_ companions. These were not _her_ stars, she knew that for sure. That meant she had travelled. Far. And so she remembered, now. She was aboard the mining ship, the Red Dwarf.

She had lived for too long on Earth : that's what she had told herself, at least. She had convinced herself that a possible cure for her all-consuming feelings of existential dread, her fear of eternity, was tied to moving forwards; she had tried isolation, reducing her stimuli as much as possible until the days sped by in a indeterminate blur that she didn't have to think about, but that was worse, so instead of trying to live less, she wanted to try living more. To travel. See the universe. Both she and it were infinite, after all : one in time, one in space. A perfect match, was it not ? She could explore it forever, constantly moving forwards, never having to tie herself down to one place, never letting her existence become stale. Never having to look back to her past, never being able to look at anything that reminded her of the expanse of time behind her that was only getting longer, would always be getting longer, yet not getting any more full of any kind of meaning. A bullet moving through time, she didn't want to think about the air vacuum she left in her wake. By travelling, remaining constantly in motion, she might be able to trick herself into feeling like she was living a succession of fulfilling, decent-lengthed lives, rather than a single live stretched out infinitely, painfully, yet that refused to ever snap. That's what she hoped.

And so she had bought herself a position on Red Dwarf. Not to work, but to travel : a tourist, a tolerated stowaway. She remembered the time she had spent here quite fondly. The people had mostly been friendly, interacted with her. It was _nice._ But more importantly, she had a _destination_ , something to look forwards to, something that would help break up eternity. _But where had they all gone ?_ She felt a sting in her heart (panic ?) as the silence around her closed in further, pressing hard against her ear drums. Were they all elsewhere ? The Red Dwarf was the size of a city, she told herself, grasping at a possible comfort she didn't really believe. She didn't believe it because she had also remembered the purpose of the white room : it was the stasis chamber.

Before she could quite process what that meant, a screen on the wall opposite to the window flickered on. Hovering over a black background was a face very familiar to her.

"Eirin ?" She asked. Talking to a screen had become normal to her during her time aboard the ship; talking to this element of her past, not so much.

"Hello, Princess," it replied. _Not completely alone,_ she thought with a rush that was probably relief."How are you feeling ? Still confused, I should expect. That would be a normal side effect of being in the stasis chamber for so long." So it was confirmed, she had skipped time. But how long was "so long" ? By whose standards ? For an immortal, what could even be considered a long time ? Time had no meaning for either of them. None at all. They both knew that. So, why did it bother her…?

"What are you doing here, Eirin ?" Kaguya asked. It wasn't her most pressing question, not by a long shot. It wasn't even the first thing she would have asked about Eirin, but she asked it anyway. Her other questions were too worrying, too real. Right now, Eirin didn't feel real. That made it safer.

"I'm here, yet I'm also not quite here, Princess. You see, I couldn't stand to let you leave on your own, forever. It was much too dangerous." _Bullshit, I'm immortal. Nothing is dangerous._ She often wished she could experience real danger. She had heard the saying that danger was the spice of life. She couldn't taste that spice so long as she had the knowledge that all danger would have no lasting consequences, ever. Eternity was too overwhelmingly bland for anything to be able to affect its taste. "That's why, after having visited the Red Dwarf together, before it took off, I managed to make some adjustments to the ship's main AI. Just a little failsafe, in case something went wrong. In simple terms, I inserted an AI version of myself designed to protect you, which would take over if need ever be." This was just like her, Kaguya thought, glared. Motivated by her endless guilt over letting Kaguya make the biggest mistake of her life, she had devoted herself to making eternity tolerable, or at least less excruciating. Not that it had worked, could work. Nothing could make eternity anything less that torture. And Kaguya suspected that Eirin also knew that. The sage's guilt was stifling, it clung to her every action, tainting them. Living in Eientei, Kaguya had tried to see her actions in a positive light, to ignore the ugly motivation behind Eirin's kindness, but millennia had eroded away at her ability to believe that the lunar sage truly still considered her a friend, instead of a simple burden. _She's only with me out of guilt. She'd be better off if I left._ That idea had taken root and grown into a healthy, robust weed wrapping around her brain over the millennia. Near the end of her time on Earth, Kaguya had felt physically sick whenever she had had to interact with Eirin. The guilt had infected her, too. Guilt over inflicting guilt. A vicious cycle. It had been one of her motivating factors for leaving, for _escaping,_ Earth. And yet, here Eirin was once again, albeit an artificial version of herself. _Dump all her guilt into an AI and blast it off into space. At least her real self is free of me._

Curiosity grew in Kaguya's mind when she remembered Eirin mentioned only activating in an emergency. _The stasis. Why ?_ "What happened, then ?" she demanded. No need for any particular politeness. Eirin wasn't real. "Why was I in stasis ?" A map opened up of the screen, next to Eirin's face : it was a map of the Red Dwarf, cross-sectioned to one of the upper floors. One of the walls was flashing red.

"Do you see this part of the ship, Princess ? It has been damaged. A massive radiation leak flooded through the ship, fatal to all those exposed to it. Of course, I was here for this sort of situation : I reacted instantly, getting the service bots to shove you in the stasis chamber before the radiation could get to you. Before anyone knew what was going on, in fact." Was that pride in her voice ? Eirin had always enjoyed displaying her own competence. Hypercompetence. Of course, she was a genius. But it was that competence that had gotten Kaguya stuck in eternity (that, and her own curiosity, but she refused to acknowledge this). She ended up resenting that competence more than anything. "Sadly, the Red Dwarf wasn't equipped with anything to handle a radiation leak properly, so the only way to make the ship safe again was to wait for the radiation levels to decrease naturally." Kaguya felt her stomach drop. She had read books, she had educated herself. She knew that Eirin had just casually mentioned putting her in stasis for over three million years. Time had no meaning to her, and yet… By comparison, the timespan she had just skipped considerably dwarfed all of her conscious existence, even though she already felt like she had lived far too long. Yet both with or without having lived those extra millions of years, everything she had been through would still be nothing but an infinitesimally small fraction of what she still had to live. It was still absolutely nothing, nothing at all. She was no closer to death. A single loud sob burst its way out of her, twisting her features in despair, before disappearing just as fast. An outburst of pain from the depths of herself still able to feel that kind of emotion. This was why she didn't let herself think about what eternity truly meant. _Block it out. Block it all out._

"Sadly, there was only room for one of you in the stasis chamber. Quite a design flaw, if you ask me." Kaguya hadn't asked, but nodded slowly anyway. Maybe it was for the best, she considered. Any surviving human would just go and die, she'd outlive them all. She'd inevitably have ended up alone anyway, and a human lifespan was nothing by her scale of time. What had she expected ? The colony on the Red Dwarf would have been able to sustain itself, to reproduce. She may have been able to sit at its centre, the colony's immortal queen, for quite some time, but something would have gone wrong eventually. She always knew she'd end up alone. This was just a lot sooner than she had hoped.

"It's just you and me then, Eirin. Just like old times…" Right now, she felt no fondness for the times she evoked. She thought back to her time in Eientei, when she had frozen the entire mansion in time, in a permanently unchanging state, just to hide from the lunarians. Back then, she was thankful for Eirin's companionship. She hadn't grown to resent her yet. _Times have changed._

"Well, not quite…" Eirin hesitated for a second. _Unusual,_ Kaguya noted. Then, the map on the screen was replaced with the feed from a video camera. Sitting with its back against the wall of a corridor, motionless, was a human figure, dressed in red and white, half obscured from the camera by her ankle-length silvery hair. Despite being unable to see their face, Kaguya let out a gasp. She'd have recognised that person anywhere. "Mokou…?" She half asked, half exclaimed in a forced whisper. Eirin nodded. In her mind, Kaguya retracted her thoughts about nothing being able to make eternity more tolerable. If anything could, it was Mokou. _Mokou !_

"But, how come she's…?"

"I told her about you plan to leave Earth behind. It got her so angry that she went and bargained her way into a position on the ship. She was working as the lowest ranking member of the ship down on the lower decks. Which, of course, explains why you two hadn't crossed paths yet. It seems like she wasn't ready to let go of you, Princess." _In truth, was I ?_ Kaguya was amazed. Despite the slight irritation over Eirin's meddlesome nature, she mostly felt overwhelming gratitude towards her. She knew she was never enough by herself, so she had found the one thing that could actually help with the princess's journey through eternity : someone in the same situation as her, someone who _understood._ Someone who she cared for. Love mixed with shared pain, love _from_ their shared pain. Pain shared, pain mutually inflicted, their suffering was what brought them together. That was far too simple an explanation of the immortal's relationship, but it's how Kaguya would have started. Over the millennia spent on Earth, they had parted ways many times, only to end up together again. Together, eternity almost had meaning. Instead of being purely restrained by immortality, they played with its boundaries, they played with death. _Death…_

"Wait, so if there was a radiation leak, but only one stasis chamber, does that mean she…?" Again, Eirin nodded.

"Luckily for you, she's immortal. No matter how many times the radiation killed her, she would always come back to life. In fact, it was quite a useful way of knowing when it would be safe to let you out again. She hasn't died in quite a long time, by now. Not of radiation, at least." _Cold, so cold._ Had the real Eirin been like this ? Kaguya didn't think so. Maybe the AI truly was focused solely on preserving her, even at the cost of others. She hated that idea. After all, shouldn't Eirin feel just as guilty for Mokou's immortality ? Kaguya thought so. Maybe she'd tell her that. Maybe she'd tell her all the things she never dared to tell the real Eirin. Let the anger out. But not now.

Kaguya stared at Mokou's motionless body. No, not quite motionless : some strands of hair moved in time with a very slow breathing cycle. Kaguya had seen the true motionlessness of death of Mokou's body enough times to be able to tell. _Death._ Mokou had spent millions of years; dying again and again, unable to escape it ? That was Kaguya's greatest fear, despite knowing it was inevitable for both of them. She imagined the suffering it must have been for Mokou. Intense, yet so, so _boring._ Can something both be torturous and boring ? Boredom was a form of torture, she knew that, really. Physical pain wasn't the problem here. She knew Mokou had suffered, and so she tried to feel compassion for her, or at least some form of remorse, but she had to face the facts : she was smiling. In a way, she was _glad_ it had happened to Mokou. After all, Mokou was not her, despite what they might have felt during certain periods of quasi-fusion. Mokou was not her, and so it wasn't her who had had to live through that suffering. It could have been, but wasn't. That was a positive. But what had really made that cruel smile creep onto her face was the fact that Mokou had been alone and suffering for so, so long, and now she would be able to come and deliver her from all the loneliness and pain, act as a saviour, put Mokou in her debt. It shifted the power balance oh so far in her favour, and she loved it. She was remembering how much she loved the power struggles, the games in their relationship. Possibly leaving Mokou behind on Earth was her second biggest mistake, she decided. Mokou brought out the best in Kaguya, but also the worst. She accentuated her, multiplied her. Made the faint sketch of her personality into a fully coloured drawing. _Although…_ Thoughts began to creep into the princess's mind, doubts wiping the smile away. _Will she even remember me ? Will she…_

"Eirin ? Is Mokou still…? There's no way, after all this time, that she's still… sane ?" The word didn't feel quite right in her mouth, but it was the best she could think of at the time. She knew full well that she had shared with Mokou many moments that, to anyone not cursed with eternity, wouldn't be considered as "sane". Killing each other for fun was just one example. No, what she really wanted to ask, what she was really worried about, was whether or not Mokou was still _present_. Whether or not she was still looking at the person she once knew, or if eternity had washed away all her insides, leaving a husk in the shape of the only person who could still make her feel anything. Had their memories together gone ? Sharing them with Mokou was what still made her feel even slightly real. If Mokou wasn't around to remember their shared suffering, did it even mean anything ? Had it happened, was it real ? She didn't trust herself to be able to tell, and it's not like the AI counted as a witness. Losing Mokou would be like losing her senses : things would be happening around her, to her, but she'd have nothing to filter them through, to confirm them, to make them real. They were part of each other, they were essential to one another. Mokou's mind was an important function of hers, she couldn't lose it without losing most of herself.

"Don't worry, Princess. She's still the Mokou that you know. After all, the Hourai Elixir preserves not only your body, but your mind, too. More or less. At the very least, her memories are intact, and she's fully aware of her surroundings." Kaguya felt relief. It was quickly embittered by panic : she had realised the implications of Eirin's words. Even when completely alone, dying in a perpetual loop of suffering, the Elixir would keep her mind functional. This was terrible. One of the few solaces from her inevitable fate that she clung to was that she always thought she had the possibility of eventually escaping into a state of unconsciousness, or at least unthinkingness; a state as close to death as she was allowed. This was her "way out", her exit, and it had just been slammed shut in her face. Everything she had just been thinking about preserving memories soured in her thoughts : there would be no escape. Mokou would remember those millions of years of suffering. She would have been conscious throughout all of them, as would Kaguya, one day. She repressed the thought. She had already had one outburst today, after all. _Save some emotion for the millennia to come. Spread them thin over the years._

"Would you like to go pay her a visit, Princess ?" Kaguya nodded. The two were drawn together again. _As it should be._

When the door to Mokou's corridor slid open, Kaguya stayed in the entrance in silence. She observed. To her, it had been maybe a few centuries since they had last met. Not long enough to miss her, not properly. _But to Mokou ?_ The white-haired immortal twitched, then turned her neck, very slowly. Her eyes set upon Kaguya, glazed over at first, unseeing. Then, they focused. Mokou screamed. It was a scream that tried to express too many emotions at once, and ended up expressing nothing but raw emotion itself. She scrambled on all fours towards Kaguya like a panicked spider, grasping at the princess's dress and hands, touching them, feeling them all over as if to test if they were real. Looking up from the ground at Kaguya, Mokou's eyes were filled with such hope, such confusion, maybe also hatred, and all she could manage was a faint "K… Kaguya…?"

Kaguya felt powerful. She had become Mokou's deliverance, her ray of light, and she hadn't even had to suffer for it. In fact, it was her fault that Mokou had suffered so much. She was in control, right now. She could do anything. She thought about kicking her, she thought about fucking her. It wasn't like either of those actions would have consequences, not in the long term. And everything became the long term. That's how eternity worked. Everything was eventually erased, forgiven. Wasn't that the basis of their relationship ? Possibly, but still not quite. Nothing was actually erased, it just lost importance with time. They had no choice but to forgive each other, because they had nobody else to turn to, anyway. After a while, they started skipping any resentment, any consideration for consequences; it was all meaningless. They didn't have the emotional capacity to care about such things. They just wanted to feel alive, and the only way to do that was with each other. They couldn't forgive, because their resentment held no meaning.

The best part of this situation, Kaguya thought, the mean smile returning, was that it was just the two of them now. Mokou needed her more than ever, and she was more in control than ever. She had the power to make or break Mokou. And so, she took the option that would solidify her position above her.

"I missed you," she lied, helping Mokou to her feet.


	2. Timescales

Mokou's sense of time had been distorted. Unravelled. The linear string of time's progression lay sprawled over the fabric of her mind like a ball of wool left alone with a playful kitten (she would have maybe liked a kitten, even if it would have died in the blink of an eye : a short distraction, followed by some fun memories). The animal that had torn through her mind was a far more brutal one. It was a monster : eternity. And she was stuck with it for three million years in a single corridor. One that didn't even have windows. Fifty metres long, two metres wide, two point five metres tall. Two hundred and fifty square metres total : that was the extent of her horizons for all that time. She knew every square centimetre of it as if it was part of her (maybe it was, at this point ? She had trouble telling). She had examined each and every tiny detail, methodically, for days on end, before moving to the next part of her prison. At a rate of one day per square centimetre, it would have lasted her over a year. A week each, nearly a decade. She was stuck there for three hundred thousand times that length. She could attempt to kill time, but the void would be filled just as quickly by so much more. The hydra of time wouldn't be defeated so easily by her attempts.

Of course, the meticulous observation of every minute detail (even though often, there would seem to be none : a slab of metal doesn't hold many secrets, but she could try to memorise the tiny lines of the metallic texture, their position, their amount, the way that light reflected off them in different angles; she was desperate for detail, which opened her up to details that would usually have melted away into insignificance) wasn't her first instinct. That came later. First came confusion. One minute, she working on the Red Dwarf, surrounded by her crewmates; then she was dead. And then she wasn't, but everyone else still was. And after that, she kept dying, again and again, and she didn't know why. She'd revive in perfect condition (as always; no escape), and within minutes, her head would feel like it was tearing itself apart from the inside. Then came the seizures, the vomiting. She didn't have any food available, obviously, but the Hourai Elixir was _kind_ enough to replenish her stomach acids after every death, so that she'd be free to vomit them up all over again. Then she'd die, and restart the whole process all over again.

She was confused, so, so confused. _Malfunctioning elixir ?_ Unlikely; Eirin didn't make this kind of mistake : the elixir was as infallible as it was inescapable. _Am I being punished ?_ Mokou didn't believe in that kind of thing, not really, not out here in space, at least. She just felt like if anything was going to be hell, this was it. She had evaded mortal's hell for so long, so a special hell had been made just for her; that's how it felt, but she didn't think she really deserved that kind of special treatment. She was forgotten, alone, and that was the problem. Besides, she didn't think that there was anything redeeming or cleansing in her suffering, no purpose at all. She didn't really think she was in hell. For the first few hundreds of millennia, she didn't really think anything at all besides _pain._

That was then, this was now : she was in a room (not a corridor, not _her_ corridor; that alone made this scene seem unreal to her), there was a bed, she was in it, apparently ? And looking down (bunk bed, top bunk, she vaguely remembered this now), she saw Kaguya, lying of a sofa, reading a book. An almost still scene. Banal. Yet to Mokou, everything was so vivid that it burnt her senses. Kaguya's breathing rattled through her brain like a hurricane, the red and gold folds in the princess's dress searing her retinas, exciting, confusing, as if she were experiencing colour for the first time ever. And everything was happening so slowly, or maybe, too fast ? Everything was happening _too much._ She drank in every page turn, every blink of Kaguya's eyes, to the fullest; she was parched for stimuli, her dehydrated mind desperately soaking in every bit of information as if it would be all that she was getting for the next millennia or so. A cactus gorging itself in preparation of the next drought. It was painful, but she lapped it up like the sweetest nectar. _It'll give me something to think about, to replay in my mind, when I end up back in the corridor. Something to cling onto._ She couldn't believe that this was real. It had no reason to be, not after so long. That's why she _had_ to soak up as much information into her mind as possible : she'd then be able to wring it out later, slowly, appreciating every delicious drop to the fullest.

The pain hadn't been constant during the millennia of deaths. The migraines grew slightly less intense; the vomiting, less severe. The intervals between each death stretched out longer, for better or for worse. _Maybe a virus in the air, that I'm slowly getting immune to ?_ Yet the elixir prevented all illness. She still had no idea why she was going through such suffering. A reason, any kind of understanding, could have helped her cope, but she was denied all information, left in the dark. Still, the pain in her mind has shrunk slightly, allowing more room for thought. And so, she attempted some of her ideas to escape. The obvious start was to use her powers over fire : she'd burn through a wall, gain access to the rest of the ship. But her flames just made the room unbearably hot, without having any visible effect. She'd have probably stubbornly kept trying, if she hadn't remembered something she thought she'd heard about fire consuming oxygen to burn. Immediate asphyxiation upon revival. That sounded worse, somehow. It would remove any future possibility of escape, any chance that she could figure a way out, or make the most of a possible change in the situation. Did this mean she still had hope ? Maybe so. That, or the alternative was just too terrifying. She resolved to only use her fire when it came to burning away the layer of blood and vomit that caked the floor, when the stench became too much to bear. After that, she resorted to one of her preferred problem solving methods : she tried punching her way out. Hammering on the door with her fists in the same place, at full strength, until she had worn down through the bone. Then she'd wait to die (she may not have known why, but she knew it'd always happen),revive, and continue with a new set of knuckles. Her fists had torn through flesh and bone with ease, so there was a chance this would work, right ? But it didn't. It didn't even leave a dent, not after thousands of lives worth of attempts. She needed to get more creative, make the most of her situation. _Stomach "acids" must be called that for a reason,_ she considered. And so, when she next needed to vomit from her sickness (often), she would do it on the door. _With any luck, it'll melt through it after enough time, right ?_ Yet the results were meaningless. She'd have needed a microscope to even notice them. Maybe given a few more billion years, she'd have been able to fit a single arm through the door. And then what ?

Even that period felt like forever ago, she thought as she lay looking at Kaguya. The two had barely exchanged a word. Or at least, that's what it felt like to Mokou, but then why was she in "our room", on "my bed" ? That had all surely been established, she was just decompressing the information on her own timescale. And by that rate, she had barely moved past their initial reunion. Kaguya's appearance had been an explosion. Mokou had been lying dormant for so long, and the doors sliding open, revealing someone from so long ago and yet so vivid in her mind, that was the Big Bang setting her universe into motion once more. She had, of course, had dreams before. When the pain wasn't too much, she'd sleep, and her brain would occasionally conjure up images from her past. These were her only escape from the corridor. But this had been different, she had touched Kaguya, felt her warmth, and it had felt real, hadn't it ? Realer than other dreams, at least. Kaguya had said some words, and in response she had started crying. She didn't really know why, or what had really been said, but those words had made her fell an actual emotion : her defences against _those_ had been deactivated long ago, so she was completely unprepared. It tore through her barriers like they were wet tissue. Crying was an act of panic, of surrender. It wasn't real, she knew that, but in the moment, she had almost accepted it as so. So, not a surrender. A tactical retreat. She was just biding herself some time until she had built her defences back up.

Curiosity struck : she dabbed at her eyes. No tears, not right now at least. She didn't really know what to do with that information : it didn't mean that she wasn't miserable, because she was, profoundly so. But she was also currently _distracted_ , and when distraction was so scarce and despair was so plentiful, the former was worth a lot more (was that how emotions worked ? Was distraction an emotion ?). Everything in this room was so new, so _full_ : there was furniture ( _more than one kind, even !)_ , there was a window ( _why couldn't I have had a window ? It would have made such a difference !)_. If she could have frozen time on this exact second, that would have given her enough to meticulously explore every tiny surface available for decades, maybe even a century, at her old rate. But she couldn't operate by her old timescale, not any more : things were changing, evolving rapidly, she was being _left behind._ She wanted to be throughout, to not miss any angle or detail, and yet she didn't even have time to explore the room through the reflexion in Kaguya's eyes before they had already moved on, changed angle, and opened up another whole world inside the room. ( _Heart racing, a long forgotten feeling.)_ Mokou felt like decades worth of entertainment were slipping through her fingers; the hourglass trickling down the sands of time, one by one, had been shattered by Kaguya's appearance, and they were now spilling out at an absurd rate as she struggled to contain them, to place them back into an orderly line, impossible in the now broken stillness that was her concept of time. Kaguya put the book down and stretched her arms; Mokou screamed. It was too much, it was so much more movement, diversity, than she had seen in the past million years (at least), and it had all been blown in an instant. The way Kaguya's muscles strained at her tendons, the way her skin folded and warped to allow for movement, the way it all came together to create a fluid movement that seemed so elegant yet complex, in her stimuli-deprived mind, it was all so much information to process, she could have spend so long analysing it if it had moved at her pace, but now it was gone, it was over, and she had only gotten to enjoy it for a second. So much wasted, so much to regret when she ended up back alone (because she would, she was sure), that she couldn't stand it; she couldn't, she had to, _it had to-_

"Stop !" She yelled, surprising both of them. "You're going too fast, I can't keep up, so just, slow down already, will you ?"

The death of the entire crew had given Kaguya a lot of freedom. Already, she hadn't been too restricted in her movements through the Red Dwarf, but there were still some limits, some places she wasn't allowed to access. This, of course, only accentuated her curiosity : what were the captain's private chambers like ? What was in the room with the classified documents ? She'd find out eventually, that, she had decided. Even if it was simply by outliving the crew she had known, securing herself a position of power through seniority, she'd manage. Power was a game of time and patience, and she had more than enough of those.

Yet death had sped up the process for her. She was now, by elimination, the highest ranking person on the ship. Her limits, her restriction, they had died along with the crew. She was almost _disappointed._ Challenge was what kept her going. She didn't want things to come too easily to her. Luckily, she thought, her most reliable challenge of all was present (although currently crying at her feet). Mokou was sure to provide her the entertainment she felt she deserved.

Right now, though, she was just a wreck, Kaguya thought, mild disdain on her face. After attempting to talk to Mokou with little success, she thought she might as well establish some rules. Use her freedom, her position of power. The two immortals, after walking around the ship in a one sided conversation, ended up in the sleeping quarters. This, Kaguya decided for both of them, was where they would be sleeping. There was a bunk bed : the two of them needed to stay together, of course. She wanted to be able to keep an eye out on Mokou, keep the leash held close. Mokou, who still wasn't responding. Annoyance flashed on Kaguya's face. Hadn't Eirin promised that Mokou's mind would be intact ? She didn't want to be stuck with a vacant shell for eternity. _Might as well kick her out into space, if it was to be like that._ But, no. _Patience._ What Mokou needed, she concluded, fully aware of the irony, was _more_ time. Like three million years wasn't enough time to be doing anything other than paying attention to her. What had she even been doing this whole time (besides dying) ? Kaguya imagined her wandering around the ship, getting her grubby little paws over everything (including what she herself hadn't seen yet !), before getting bored and making glistening paintings out of her own saliva or something equally demeaning. _Mokou's lucky I'm here, now. She owes me a lot._ The fact that Mokou's suffering was mostly Kaguya's own fault had already seemed to slip from her mind. Conveniently. Of course, if a truth was held only by one person, and they just happened to forget it, then it might as well not be true, right ?

Mokou was still unresponsive. _So be it_. Maybe it'd take a while before she'd be back to normal. Kaguya could wait. She had eternity by her side. She was mostly saying that to convince herself that she was ok with that, to hide the anger that she felt. Yet the anger was only a façade, a way to hide her fear. Fear that Mokou was gone. _Please, don't leave me alone_.

She could tell that Mokou was overwhelmed : she was staring at every detail in the room, transfixed, like it was the single most interesting thing she had ever seen. Arms limp by her side, barely moving, eyes wide open, because she had just seen the window. Kaguya hated this. She felt like anything she did might only make it worse, like she might blow Mokou's poor little mind if she tried to help in any way, so she wouldn't ( _isn't she lucky to have a friend as caring as I am ?_ ). But her only possible action being inaction frustrated her. Hadn't she been inactive the whole time she was in stasis ? She wanted to start doing things again, and Mokou wasn't cooperating. Even she could accept that she was being unreasonable, though, so she decided to pass the time by reading a book. A simple activity. One that you didn't need to be in deep space for. _A waste_ , if that concept was still applicable to her. It wasn't. She opened it, and started to read the first page.

And then, Mokou started to scream. Screaming about how everything was too fast, how she couldn't keep up. _Why ?_ Kaguya stared at her, trying to understand the problem. This was her choice : she didn't have to try to understand. She could just let her fellow immortal scream about nothing for as long as she wanted, it wouldn't have made much of a difference. But Kaguya liked to pretend that she was benevolent. That was very debatable, but she would do what it took to keep her toys in functioning condition, at the very least. Glue together the cracks, replace the wooden wheels, so that they could keep on running for her enjoyment. After all, smashing them further, sacrificing them for sadistic pleasure, that, too, would have provided entertainment. But she didn't choose to do that. Wasn't that an act of kindness ? _Benevolent._

Instead, she asked what was wrong. What was too fast, what needed to be slowed down. She couldn't get a straight answer : it seemed like _everything_ was the problem, everything was too much. The way Mokou's eyes drank in every one of Kaguya's movements, the panicked way in which she seemed to be committing everything to memory, resisting the urge to blink due to the milliseconds of data she'd miss, milliseconds that still contained more change that she'd experienced over the last millions of years, Kaguya started to feel worried. She and Mokou weren't operating on the same scale of time any longer. Mokou's had accommodated itself to dealing with an absence of change, of stimuli, ever : her mind was like a drain used to accommodating only the occasional drop of water, now forced to process a flooding river. _Too much._ She was bursting at the seams. Eternity had driven a wedge between them, eternity which was the one thing that had connected them all this time. Mokou, moving on. Mokou, millions of years ahead of Kaguya, who had been left behind. _No, she's not allowed. She can't leave me. I'll drag her back to me if I need to._

And yet, she had no idea how. She couldn't tackle the effects of such suffering. Maybe she was the most important thing in Mokou's life, for better or for worse, but compared to what Mokou had been through, she was insignificant. Powerless. Kaguya hated being powerless. She wanted to control Mokou, and yet she was stuck millions of years behind her. She clenched her fists in anger. She scowled, turning her head away slightly. This made thousands of her long, black hairs bend, some of them swinging sideways to come to a new resting position, all of them reaching downwards as if longing to disappear into the ground. The shadows on her face shifted, the innumerable strands blocking tiny lines of light that agglutinated in blocks of darkness on her face. That one small movement caused so many changes, created so much new information. The optic nerve linking Mokou's eyes to her brain couldn't even take in all the data, all the movement that had just occurred, before it was already over. Even if she asked Kaguya to repeat the motion, the strands of hair had a mind of their own. It would never be exactly the same twice.

"Stop moving !" She snapped. Kaguya turned back towards her, another wasted movement. "I said stop, damn it !"

"Why ?" Kaguya snapped back, her tone unnecessarily cruel. She felt a rush of adrenaline. Mokou hadn't forgotten how to talk. Or at least, she remembered how to yell. Just like the "good old days". So there was something left in her from back then ? Kaguya latched onto that hope. Mokou seemed to struggle with the question. Recoil slightly, as Kaguya leaned towards her. _Why was she so opposed to movement ?_

"Because… because I'm missing so much !" Kaguya wanted to understand, she really did. Yet they were operating in opposite gears, cogs turning at different rates on the never-stopping machine of immortality. As far as Kaguya was concerned, there was no waste, when everything was infinite. Didn't Mokou know this ? Hadn't they bonded over this ? She felt betrayed, but shoved it aside. _Priorities._

"You're not missing anything, Mokou. Nothing's happening." That's how she felt it. _So much is happening, so fast._ That's how Mokou felt it. It made her angry.

"Yes it is, there's so much going on at once, and I, I don't want to miss it before it all…" Her distress was real, her sentence cut short by panic welling up in her, drowning the rest of her words out. She had started clawing at herself, and probably didn't even realise it. _Before what, though ?_ Kaguya felt like that was the key to what was causing Mokou so much distress. She would pry into it, tear into Mokou until she once again understood her perfectly. They had done it before, they had ripped everything apart within each other, examined it mercilessly, and put it back together again, until they knew each other inside out.

"Before what ? What's going to happen ?" She asked her question aggressively, a knife aimed to dissect Mokou. She accompanied it with a subtle hair flip, and test both of her hypothesis and Mokou's patience. The latter had already run dry. She grabbed Kaguya by the shoulders, as if to keep her still.

"Before this ends ! Before it's confirmed that none of this is real, before you leave me and I wake up in that corridor again and I…"

Were those tears welling up in Mokou's eyes ? They made Kaguya grin. They were great, she loved seeing them, she loved what they meant. They meant that in her mind, she could still make this about her. Mokou was worried that none of this was real; another way of saying that she was scared to lose Kaguya again. Kaguya had saved her from solitude : now her presence was too good to be true. Yes, Kaguya was grinning : she was powerful and Mokou was fragile. She just needed to solidify Mokou into reality, _her_ reality, the one where she was Mokou's saviour, and Mokou was forever indebted to her. It was _perfect_.

"You think this isn't real then, Mokou ?" she asked, her hands rising up to Mokou's face. Contact, skin on skin. It felt so alien to Mokou : it had been so long, she thought she had forgotten what it was like. But she hadn't, not really. The elixir forbade it. It was alien, yet oh so familiar. She couldn't leave her memories behind; they could instantly cross a three million year gap. Kaguya had been betting on this. She was linking them back together through her touch, through memory, dragging her back into her timescale. But she needed to step it up. Something more personal. Her hands travelled downwards. _Might as well make the most of it._ Mokou shuddered when Kaguya's hands passed over her breasts. Not because she shied away from the touch : they had moved past those boundaries a long time ago. Their bodies had basically been one. And she remembered that…? The way the princess's fingers traced seductive lines on her skin, the ways she squeezed her flesh in such a familiar way… But no, that was the problem, it was only that : _familiar._ Memory. _This could just be my mind stepping up its game, finding a new way to torture me. It doesn't mean anything, it's not-_

Mokou's thoughts were cut short by a new sensation : _pain._ Not the pain from the sickness she still didn't understand, but a pain that brought her back in time, a pain that reminded her of what had kept her going back on Earth. She looked down. Kaguya's fingers had moved on from her chest to under her ribs. Pierced through her skin. The princess had stabbed into her stomach with her hand, and was now looking at her, the smuggest of grins on her face as blood covered her pale skin. This all happened in an instant. The instant later, Mokou reacted. Her hand flew upwards, striking Kaguya's face. The princess flinched a little, but the hand inside Mokou's entrails only gripped harder, sending more pain shooting through her body. Mokou cried out, fighting back now, trying to shake off Kaguya who was still grinning, insufferably grinning, taunting her and still not letting go. _I'll wipe that grin off your face._ Mokou gripped the princess's neck with both hands, pressing hard, crushing the air out as her fingers dug into her soft skin. She was in the moment, she was focused on killing her like she'd done so many times before. She felt the adrenaline, she felt the neck she had choked so often in the past, she felt the pain within her. She had acted. She had tried to cause change, to interact, and it had had consequences. This wasn't just the memory of a touch, a feeling. This was her, no longer reduced to being an observer in a restrained world she had no control over. She had, without realising it, let go of her fear of being unable to observe everything : so much was happening at once that she couldn't even begin to process it, except now, she was a part of it : it was her reality, too. She had missed so much in the last few seconds, but she could _create_ more change, she could _interact._ This was her, realising that she was finally free from her unchanging prison.

And as the last dregs of oxygen left Kaguya's lungs and the painful grip on Mokou's organs was released, she realised what the grin was about. Kaguya had wanted her to react, to interact. She had been led into one of the princess's games and had only realised it once it was already over. There was nothing realer than that.

Kaguya lay dead on the floor. Mokou crouched next to her, blood still pouring from her wound. She'd probably join the princess in death, soon. She awaited that. They'd die, and then be dragged back again, like always. Mokou sighed, lying down next to Kaguya, her vision starting to blur. _So, it is real, then ?_ She still couldn't fully accept that as the truth. She still expected to wake up in that corridor, both her prison and her torturer. She still felt the urge to examine every tiny detail on Kaguya (the marks left by her hands around her neck, bursting hundreds of tiny blood vessels, the way her hair interacted with the growing pool of blood, picking some of the strands up, clumping them together, the way-) but she resisted. Because she really, really wanted this to be real, and the princess had tried her best to convince her that it was. _Damn her. She's going to give herself way too much credit for this. She's going to act like she "cured" me._ As she lay dying, she realised that this being real also cemented her past suffering into a solid block, a massive chunk of her past that she'd never escape. Back then, she had stopped feeling like she was part of reality; Kaguya had helped drag her out of that. She had made her realise that the present was real, but also, that her three million years of pain was, too. It was _in the past_ , which meant it could never be changed, never be anything else : she now had to deal with that being an inescapable part of her life, and there was no chance of the princess helping her deal with that. It was her own problem : not _visible_ enough to be of importance to Kaguya. She was alone, she thought, alone with three million years of her life that she'd never get back, never forget. Then, she stopped thinking. She had fainted from blood loss. Death came soon afterwards.


	3. Empathy

Empathy. This was a concept Kaguya thought about, sometimes. Occasionally, idly. Just like sometimes, she'd think about how much hair she had lost over the millennia she had been alive. Maybe she thought about that more often, actually : her hair was down to the bottom of her legs, and was shed at an average rate, with an average rate of regrowth. However, each time she died, everything within her was reset to a previous state, a snapshot of herself that apparently, somehow, was considered her _ideal_ state; she reckoned this would mean that longer hairs would drop out faster than most people, since they often didn't have to regrow all the way. At an average of losing one hundred strands per day, each strand being over one metre fifty, that would mean the total length would be… She enjoyed calculating things like this about herself, statistics for which the results were on a scale far different to most people, results that set her apart from everyone else. Alienated her. Immortality factoids. Eternity hadn't quite dulled her curiosity, even if she often used the results to then feel bad about herself. _Look at these numbers and pity the poor immortal who had been forced to live so much,_ she'd think to herself. Of course, there was never anyone to share these with, except for Mokou, and instead of getting pity out of her, it would just make her feel sick or get angry. Which was a good enough reason for Kaguya to still be thinking about those little facts containing such large numbers. They put things into scale, which was precisely what neither of them wanted, but Kaguya's cruelty towards Mokou, towards _herself_ , was by far the stronger motivating factor.

But, _empathy._ Thinking about that didn't give her facts that she could use to hurt Mokou, to hurt herself. It wasn't as useful, as _fun_ , but she still did it, occasionally. Sometimes, she liked the sound of her own thoughts, when they were working through something at her own pace, getting a decent workout without overexerting themselves. It distracted them, kept them in good shape. It also drowned out the background noise of her other thoughts, the constant screaming, for a while. A short while. Empathy, she thought, calmly arranging her ideas into constructed sentences, _empathy_ was a framework that served most people two purposes : firstly, to prevent actions that would have negative consequences to someone else, and secondly, to give pity to someone else over the consequences of actions that had already occurred. This was the general conclusion that she had arrived at and stuck to, after abstracting the notion over millennia of being alive. Maybe she was correct. Probably not. It didn't matter : she had already moved past any considerations about the accuracy of her definition, and instead, would ponder over its application, its _uses._ And, as was common to her when thoughts were left to fester in the stagnant waters of her brain for all those years, she'd come to two completely contradictory conclusions, antinomies that she could present under whichever angle best suited her at the time.

Empathy was no exception to this. She considered : in a way, with her definition, it no longer applied to her. Empathy was all about consequences, and yet, especially in her current situation, nothing she did really _had_ any consequences. She took her surroundings as an example : she was lying on the bottom bunk of a bunkbed, Mokou above her, snoring loudly. She could choose to shoot a beam of light at the source of the sound, killing Mokou, killing the noise. She'd like to do that : it would be purely beneficial to her, with absolutely no downside. Most people, however, would not do that, because of empathy : there might be some pain in it for Mokou, and, of course, some death. Consequences. Empathy serving its first purpose. But the reason she didn't do it wasn't out of empathy, but the exact opposite : it was because empathy couldn't be applied to her. She'd kill Mokou, who would simply come back to life, and eventually forget what had happened. Her action would be pointless, would have no _consequences :_ therefore, empathy couldn't apply to her, since it lacked that fundamental driving force. So, she was free from needing to worry about being empathetic, then ? She rested on that conclusion for a while, toying with it in her mind. It was comfortable, comforting. She could allow herself to sink into it like a soft bed, wrap herself in its covers, blocking out the harsh cold surrounding her, the biting cold that was accountability for her actions, with her warm cocoon of irresponsibility. Yes, she'd keep this conclusion available : a useful _fact_ (she'd proven to herself that it was true, had she not ?) that she could use if she ever wanted to escape from thinking about her actions for a while. And yet, this was just another shield around herself. A way to be even more detached from reality. She already barely existed, she already wasn't a person anymore. This conclusion had its perks, but it was also dangerous. _Maybe if I think about it a little longer, then._ And so, she carried on playing with the notion of empathy, unravelling it at the seams, painting over it with all new colours, yet somehow keeping the original still intact, still visible in her mind, until she came to her second conclusion, her contradictory conclusion that she would hold on the same level of truth as the first. She already knew that her actions had no consequences, and that had been what removed any considerations of empathy from them. But, (she started smiling to herself), _but._ Letting herself do what she wanted to Mokou would bring her pleasure. There were many things she could do right now to the sleeping immortal, all possible, yet none acceptable within the framework of empathy. (Pause in her train of thought as she imagines what she could do to Mokou, right now, if she so chose. Smile widens. Feelings of power, slight arousal. She knows she could, and so she keeps this feeling for later, she stores it. If she wanted to, she could, and savouring the possibility was almost as exciting as actually exerting it.) _But._ She _wasn't_ within that framework. Her actions wouldn't have consequences, and thus couldn't be immoral. _And yet she still held herself back._ This was it, the contradiction she was looking for, the logical fallacy she could sink her teeth into and suck the sweet nectar from, despite knowing that it shouldn't exist, ignoring that fact deliberately. If she could trick herself into believing it, that was all that mattered. And she could. She excelled at that. And so she smiled : if none of her actions actually had consequences, and she was free from empathic considerations, but still chose not to follow her every whim, then maybe it wasn't so much her actions, but her every _inaction_ that was inherently an act of empathy on her behalf. _Yes_ , this was something she would like to believe. After all, she had a lot of thoughts that she didn't act upon, even though she could have done so, nothing was stopping her. Why, by this logic, she was a saint ! Immortality hadn't made her a monster, but on the contrary, it had taught her empathy on a much deeper level than most people ! _I'm sure Mokou hasn't thought this much about it. She doesn't understand empathy like I do. Maybe that's why she's so impulsive._ Once again, Kaguya had managed to twist her thoughts into a convoluted mess that happened to be the exact configuration that she needed to feel smug, superior. She had placed herself above Mokou, above everyone, and found a way to feel good about herself. She chuckled, savouring the glow of self-righteousness.

The feeling faded quickly, as it always did, leaving her once again in the dark, hating herself and making up lies to try to avoid doing so. All her thoughts were ultimately pointless, she knew this, deep down. The darkness mocked her for trying. She shoved her conclusion to the back of her mind for later, because _damn it, even if I'm wrong, it could still be useful. And it's not like I'm definitely wrong…_

The underside of Mokou's bed was a sight that she was getting used to, by now. It was, of course, Kaguya who had decided on the sleeping arrangements, when Mokou wasn't lucid enough to object. Not that she would have : she had been given the top bunk. She was above Kaguya, dominant : a position of power. _Let her believe that_ , Kaguya thought. _Let her have her false sense of power. I hold it where it matters._ Because, whilst Mokou may have been given the symbolic position of power (worthless to Kaguya, probably to Mokou as well, but _poor Mokou_ must be so starved for any kind of self worth that she'd cling onto it anyway and pretend it meant something), Kaguya had the _useful_ position. Kaguya didn't sleep much. She was a lunarian, technically : sleep just wasn't something she really needed. When she did it, it was mostly to escape consciousness briefly, to bring her one step closer to… (She wished it actually brought her closer to something, some kind of end, instead of just briefly stalling in her unending battle against eternity.) To Mokou, sleep was also technically unnecessary (death by sleep deprivation, revival in perfect health), but she did it to escape the adverse effects of tiredness. It was very human, very _biological_. (The lunarian concept of impurity surfaced in Kaguya's mind; it disgusted her that those old thoughts still lurked in her mind.) Instead, Kaguya spend most of her allocated sleeping time pretending to sleep (she couldn't say "nights" : deep space didn't really have any indicators of passing time, and their own biological clocks had stopped ticking long ago; it was far too irregular to be anything close to "nights"), and instead, thinking, or simply existing. Maybe she would have slept more, but she couldn't, she wasn't built that way. So she monitored. If Mokou was to leave her bed, if she went and tried to do something _without her_ , Kaguya would know about it straight away. Like this, she could keep a close eye on Mokou, she could make sure that she knew her every action, even the ones she might think would go unnoticed. _She can't just have an existence outside of me, after all._ Of course, nothing ever happened. Mokou slept like a log. This didn't stop Kaguya from obsessing over the possibility of her doing something. _What if._

Another advantage, of course, was that the opposite was true for Kaguya : she could slip out from beneath Mokou at any point, unnoticed. As much as she hated the idea of Mokou doing anything without her knowledge, she valued her own secrecy, to an extent. She didn't really mind whether Mokou knew what she did or not : she held no secrets worth keeping after how close they had gotten in the past. She wanted her secrecy simply because _she could_ , because it was something that, in a way, gave her a slight edge over Mokou in their eternal power struggle. It wasn't something that actually mattered, objectively, Kaguya knew this. But at the same time, when interactions with Mokou were the only thing that _did_ matter, proportionally to everything else, it was of utmost importance. Mokou was Kaguya's life, and Kaguya wanted to make sure she was Mokou's. This, as well as for "privacy", was why she had smashed all the screens in the room that were able to connect to the central AI. To Eirin. Here, Kaguya really did want to act unobserved. She had spend millennia with Eirin, under the stern gaze of a mentor, a gaze that had soured, that had been drain of all positivity, until all that was left was a constant feeling of being pitied for being alive, and judged for the way that she was doing it. She was Eirin's biggest (only ?) mistake, she was well aware of that. She had made Eirin feel guilty, by being guilty herself of living. So guilty was Eirin that she had packaged it all up and uploaded it to the Red Dwarf. _Well, I want none of it. Not here._ The idea of that stern yet sorrowful gaze constantly trained on her from inside the screen deeply disgusted her. This room was for her and Mokou only : their corner of deep space, their cocoon for them to liquefy into each other and become one. Eirin's gaze was a barrier between them, a hole in the cocoon from which the fluids of their fusion would leak out, leaving it incomplete, unsatisfying. Just thinking of Eirin's interference, _existence_ , made her angry enough to need to stand up, to leave the warmth of her bed and start pacing, glaring into the dark room around her. But her anger had nowhere to go, no target : the screens had already been smashed, the problem, solved. Anger needs a target, otherwise it keeps burning, consuming all the air in the space it takes up inside you until there's none left, and you suffocate. This place, though, was hers to control, hers alone. Their situation was perfect for Kaguya to take advantage of Mokou's weakness and turn it into dependence : Mokou was still adapting from her time spent in solitude and suffering, and so didn't feel capable of leaving this room yet. This was great : it reduced the variables enough for Kaguya to monitor everything. No more wondering where Mokou had gone, what she was doing, _without her_. There was barely any time during which she didn't know exactly where Mokou was. She had abandoned Mokou once, when she left earth on the Red Dwarf : never again. She had learnt her lesson. During that time, she hadn't necessarily been miserable, but she'd been her own person, living for herself. She didn't want that. To her, it felt like she was only half a person, without Mokou. Living for herself just seemed so dry, so bland, and being reunited with Mokou had brought all the colour rushing back into her life. Never again would she go without her other half. In this room, she could plunge herself back into Mokou, intertwining their lives, their very existence, until she no longer had to worry about herself as a single entity, as a person.

Yet Kaguya couldn't help but worry. Mokou wasn't "herself" again yet : she wasn't how Kaguya wanted her to be. Their interactions were somehow duller, and Mokou, less sharp. Kaguya hated this. She wanted Mokou to be sharp. She wanted her to cut deep. Right now, she could barely leave a scratch. This wasn't right at all : their interactions were supposed to be destructive, they were supposed to tear each other apart so that they could rebuild together. How was Mokou supposed to dissect Kaguya into small pieces when she could barely piece through the skin of superficiality ? But Kaguya was determined to sharpen Mokou up again. So she'd started taking care of her. Bringing her food, even. Like that, Mokou didn't need to leave the room, but could still eat healthily. That was how she had explained her actions to Mokou, a wide, insincere smile on her face. Mokou hadn't even noticed the insincerity. That hurt Kaguya, a lot, but not in the way she wanted to get hurt. _There's still a long way to go._ But with a sigh and a shake of her head, Kaguya had resolved to keep bringing Mokou food. It put her in Kaguya's debt, deeper and deeper every time, whilst reminding Mokou of her own weakness; it shifted the balance more in Kaguya's favour. After all, Mokou had remembered the taste of food : this gave Kaguya the power to cut it off whenever she wanted to. Back in Gensokyo, this level of power being on Kaguya's side would have made Mokou's blood boil. Prod the wild animal enough, and it'll fight back : Mokou would have done something, she was resourceful, she'd have found a way to restore the balance. Kaguya didn't really want the power balance in her favour for this long, she told herself : what she wanted was the struggle, something to dedicate her mind to. So, if she kept pushing Mokou down, indebting her, gaining power, maybe, she hoped, maybe she'd finally fight back with all the ferocity she loved.

Thinking about the situation had Kaguya all frustrated. She needed a break from the cell she had locked herself in. An outlet for her anger, her anger at not being able to use her usual outlet. As much as she hated her, she knew it was time to visit Eirin. It was ok : it wasn't in their room, so it wouldn't interfere with her reality, the one that mattered, the one with Mokou. A break : she allowed herself that. After all, she was on the bottom bed : Mokou would never know.

It didn't take long after leaving the room for Kaguya to find a functioning screen. After all, they were everywhere on the ship, embedded into the wall like scabs. Ones Kaguya itched to scratch off. She had healed, had she not ? Eirin's protection wasn't useful any longer. She could scratch her off her skin, discard her. And yet here Kaguya was, coming back for more. Reopening the wound, making it go through the whole healing process again, creating a new unsightly scab. She just couldn't let herself _be healed._ She had to always be _healing_. Future-oriented. She couldn't allow herself to stagnate. It would mean she had lost to eternity.

"Eirin !" she called, zero hint of respect in her voice; a demand. The screen flickered on, and Kaguya reflexively curled her lip at the sight. Already she considered walking away, going back to brooding in the darkened room, but she was restless, and wanted to take it out on someone who probably didn't deserve it.

"Princess. It's been a while. Why did you destroy the screens in your room ? They were my only way of contacting you." Kaguya let out a single derisive laugh (concentrated, precise); "it's because I can't stand to see your guilty, pathetic face" (the release, the attack). Out here, in deep space, she could finally treat Eirin the way she had wanted to for so long. She could spit the venom of millennia's worth of accumulated resentment right at Eirin's face. As she had already concluded, she was free from any considerations of empathy. She could let loose. And yet, she didn't even have to speak to Eirin at all : her simple presence, here, giving a purpose, a reason to exist to this AI, was an act of empathy towards this sad husk of her former mentor. Feeling justified, she smiled.

"I need to be able to keep an eye on you, Princess. It's unsafe for me to not be able to monitor everywhere on board the ship." Eirin's voice : a sickening mix of concern and reproach. Kaguya couldn't stomach it. It was missing the most vital part of the interaction : anger. _Why couldn't she just get angry ?_ Kaguya would provoke her, deliberately get in her way, and yet she'd never get angry. Her venom would simply wash right over Eirin, leaving her unaffected; her attacks were as ineffective as a snake spraying venom on a marble statue. Eirin would never get angry. Kaguya hated that. _Mokou had the decency to get angry, to fight back._ Kaguya had an effect on her : that's why she liked Mokou so much, maybe. Affectable, yet unbreakable, she could pour the most corrosive parts of her personality, of herself, over Mokou, and it would burn her, it would cause her pain, but she'd always recover from it, be back for more. All the fun of breaking, without the consequences of it _being broken._ Always future-oriented. Eirin, she never changed. She would never _be broken_ by Kaguya's caustic attacks, but only because she would never break. A never ending supply of something with no demand, that was the feedback she got from attacking Eirin. She'd never be able to go too far, she'd never break her and then have to fix her, but she got no satisfaction from her attacks. All she could do was exhaust herself. What was the point ? Mokou and Kaguya were trapped in eternity, but when it came to Eirin, it felt as if she _was_ eternity. Unchanging, impossible to influence, to effect. A constant. She might as well not be there at all.

"I don't want you keeping an eye on me. I came here to escape from you, Eirin." A short pause. "I hate you." It wasn't the first time she had said those words to Eirin. Far from it; Eirin was used to it, by now. But before, it was when she was drowning in despair, lucidity clouded in the murky waters of her thoughts, wishing only for death, to cease, to not have to keep going and going and going. What did it matter what she said, when she was feeling that way ?But it would eventually pass, her brain would allow room for other thoughts; she was, and would always be, alive, so it _did_ matter what she 'd apologise, and _of course_ , Eirin would forgive her. Not now. There was nothing cloudy about her thoughts. No possibility to claim that she was beside herself. No excuses. She stared Eirin right in the eyes (the meaningless pixels that drew them on the screen) when she spoke. A bullet of hate, aimed right for Eirin's heart. She waited for her to start bleeding out.

Instead, Eirin just shook her head, disappointed. _Fuck you ! You're not above me ! You don't get to be disappointed in me !_ Once again, Eirin managed to make Kaguya feel judged. Inferior. She started charging a spear of light in the palm of her hand : she didn't need this. She was ending the conversation.

"Princess, don't do that. I'm here to help you."

"I told you, I don't want your help !" She thought back to Mokou, still almost silent, dépaysée now that she was in a world where time actually flowed around her."It's not like you could help with anything that matters, anyway." The petulance of a child refusing help from a wiser adult; Kaguya easily reverted back to their old roles. Eirin's expression softened.

"Try me, then. What is it you want help with ?" The calm in her voice, her eyes. She was always a good listener. Despite all her resentment towards Eirin, Kaguya would still go to her and talk about her problems (her solvable ones; the ones that didn't really matter), back on Earth. How easy it would be to allow Eirin to slip back into the role of her mentor. Especially now : she'd be able to treat her however she wanted, yet still be able to benefit from her advice. A win-win situation : she wouldn't even be sacrificing anything. Anything, besides her stubbornness. These days, that was most of her.

"You can't help. The problem is with Mokou. That's not your domain, she's mine. She's been through a lot, so right now, she's…"

"Vulnerable ?" Eirin asked with a smile. She had found the exact word Kaguya had been thinking of, that much was visible from her expression. "I'm correct, aren't I, Princess ? Remember when I said that this version of me is here for the sole purpose of taking care of you ? You know me well. You should know better than to underestimate me." Kaguya felt her skin crawl; a profound sense of uneasiness was starting to creep through her. This wasn't just any computer, this was a computer with Eirin's personality in it. Her intelligence, her ruthlessness. _What has she done ?_

"Inversely, I know you well too, Princess." Another self-satisfied smile.

"What are you getting at ?" The question was aggressive, a snarl : a warning. She wasn't sure if she wanted Eirin to carry on, so she was on the offensive, pre-emptively.

"Well, I know you well enough to know that Mokou is your everything. That's why I brought her onto this ship. But you, you had left her behind on Earth. It seemed very unlike something you would do. I was suspicious : you say you left because you wanted to escape, because you had grown tired with your life on Earth, but it was more than that, wasn't it ?" Kaguya couldn't hold Eirin's gaze any longer. She was staring right through her, deep into her thoughts. There was triumph creeping into Eirin's voice : she had always enjoyed her monologues, her displays on mental prowess. Kaguya suspected it was what had kept her going : Eirin was always involved in some kind of long-term scheme spanning years, decades, sometimes even millennia, and the pleasure she took in seeing everything slot neatly into place somehow made eternity seem worth it to her. She had her enemies, other creatures of intelligence on a level Kaguya couldn't begin to rival, to keep her occupied. Delving into Eirin's machinations always made her feel worthless, stupid. Right now, she was realising that she was part of one, and Eirin's gaze was crushing her, reminding her of her own inferiority, objectifying her into a simple cog in Eirin's plans.

"It didn't take much for me to realise what you were really looking for, Princess. It was _control_ you were seeking out here in the stars. Earth was too vast for even you to control, so you wanted a fresh start, as if that were possible. You wanted control over your life, so you tried to leave your old one behind for a more manageable one. A microcosm that you'd extend your influence over, bit by bit, until you controlled it all. But that wasn't all, was it ? You also wanted control over the people in your life. And by that, I mean Mokou, obviously. You wanted to force her to make a difficult decision, one that you already knew what the outcome would be." Kaguya gulped. Eirin was reaching into her, breaking down the barriers of contradictions she had set up around her thoughts, exposing the lies she had woven to prevent her from needing to think about herself too much. What Eirin was saying was true, she was now forced to admit it, even though she wasn't ready, she was still in denial. Eirin's cold gaze tore through all that and exposed her hypocrisy for what it was. She felt naked, stripped of the comforting lies she always draped over herself. She tried to tell Eirin to stop, but her earlier bravado had withered, died. Her venom had tried up under the harsh light of the truth : she was defenceless.

"You could have left on any ship, but you waited until you knew Mokou was nearby before setting off on this one. You told me about your plans, even though we were barely ever speaking at the time. And when we were touring the ship, you kept bringing Mokou up. You know I'm far from stupid. You know I'd pick up on what you really wanted : for me to tell Mokou about you leaving. That would force Mokou into a difficult position : give up on Earth entirely to be with you, or lose you forever. But you knew what she would pick, didn't you ? You must have felt good about yourself when you saw that she had chosen you over everything else, no ? You must have felt _powerful._ You were the shooting star, shining bright with power; Mokou was but the trail, forced to accompany you and your brilliance. You got what you wanted." Kaguya couldn't deny it, nor could she prevent a nervous yet gleeful smile from creeping onto her lips. Powerful ? Yes, she had felt powerful; it was a rush that made her tingle all over, shudder with pleasure. The kind of feeling she could get high off of. Just thinking about it made her heart sting with a delicious twinge that nothing else could provoke. So what if it made her a bad person, at least it made her feel _something_ , at least it made her feel like a person at all. She wouldn't deny or apologize for this. This _was_ her.

"I know how much you crave that kind of power, Princess. Luckily for you, I'm on your side, even if you don't seem to think so. Maybe my full self would have been held back by empathy, but I'm not; that wasn't included in what was uploaded to the ship. So I helped you. I got you into a situation where you would have even more power." Smile erased; in its place : a cold sweat, tense breathing. Kaguya could now see where Eirin was going. She wanted to be wrong. She doubted that she was.

"Since you destroyed the screens, I can't be sure, but I'd imagine that Mokou is quite manipulable, right now ? The two of you, locked in that room together… I'm sure you've been taking good care of her. And I'm sure she feels very indebted to you. Like she owes you everything, maybe ? That's a lot of power to have, isn't it ? Everything is in your favour. It's the kind of situation that you'd only be able to dream of normally, right ? You wanted power, control, and you're enjoying it to the fullest." The locked room, the isolation, the ease of monitoring Mokou… it was like a dream come true. She was powerful. She was enjoying it. It might have been missing the fight she was used to, but that would come back with time, right ? And of time, they had plenty. _So what was the harm in enjoying the situation while it lasted…?_

"But Mokou wouldn't let herself be dominated so thoroughly like this, not under normal circumstances. She had to go through a lot to be this broken. That's where I came in. You wanted isolation with her ? No escape from each other, forced proximity ? You wanted control over her, more control than ever before ? All that was achievable. All it took was a radiation leak." Kaguya felt sick. She had known that was coming, but it hadn't helped. She felt sick, sick at Eirin, but mostly sick at herself. She couldn't forget how ecstatic she had felt when Mokou was at her feet, looking at her like a saviour, a goddess. Eirin was showing her a portrait of herself, one that didn't shy away from all the grotesque details and ugly features, and was forcing her to nod and say _yes, that's me._

"Maybe most people would have stopped at that, but I'm always a few steps ahead. It would have been a shame if Mokou wasn't in the right state of mind, when I reawakened you from stasis. I had to make sure I had done the job correctly. That's why I kept her locked in the same corridor all that time." Shock flushed out the sickness in Kaguya's system, creating room for anger.

"Wait, you're saying she was where I found her, the whole time ? She didn't have access to the rest of the ship ?" Kaguya had assumed Mokou had at least that. The ship was massive, there was entertainment, food, _distraction._ She had revelled in the idea of being Mokou's saviour from loneliness : her first living contact in so long, her friend from the past here to deliver her from solitude. But this. _This ?_ Something was clawing at Kaguya's heart, a feeling she wasn't used to. Empathy. _So this is what it feels like. Empathy's second function._

"Of course not. She might have found the food, and she'd have eaten it all by now. And she'd have explored the entire ship, in that time. I know you well enough to know you'd hate coming second to her in any way. Am I right ?" Kaguya cursed Eirin. _Yes, she's right._ She would have despised that : she could even remember having thoughts about that very same situation. Attacked, exposed, she needed to cover herself once more in comforting lies, in half truths that shrouded the ugliness of her thoughts. Outrun the guilt. This, of course, came easily to her. _It was her or me_ : that was the bottom line. There was only one stasis pod, and she hadn't even chosen to use it : it had been decided for her. It was out of her control. It wasn't her responsibility. She didn't need to feel bad about it. She could still take the moral high ground.

"All this put Mokou into the situation most favourable to you. I told you, I'm on your side, Princess. So you would do well to trust me a little more. What do you say ?"

"I didn't ask for this, Eirin. You decided this for me. This is all on you." Erase the guilt, pass on the responsibility. Kaguya couldn't handle those kinds of feelings, so she needed to be able to lie to herself. For that, Eirin had to take the fall. In a way, that made her useful for _something_.

"Princess, Princess… It's unhealthy to lie to yourself so often. Besides, like I said before, I'm not the real Eirin, I don't have all the extras like compassion or empathy : I'm only here to help you. You don't need to keep up any kind of façade with me. You don't have to lie about how this isn't what you wanted, or pretend to believe things like that I'm the enemy or that there was really only on stasis pod or-"

"What did you just say ?" Kaguya's eyes were glowing.

"The stasis pod ? Come now, princess, did you really believe that ? What kind of ship would only have one-" Eirin was cut off by a loud explosion. A beam of light had shot out of Kaguya's hand, piercing through where Eirin's face had been just moments ago. She was breathing heavily, her eyes wild. When the smoke settled, she fell to her knees. She felt heavy : guilt had finally caught up to her, pounced, and was now refusing to let go. Digging its claws into her back, it was whispering into her ear, telling her how true everything Eirin had said was. _Yes, you were enjoying having Mokou under your power. Yes, this was all your fault. No, you wouldn't have made things happen differently, if you could._ Kaguya was trying to shake off guilt's massive burden on her shoulders, but it had wormed its way deep inside her, it was in her brain now, becoming part of her, but she couldn't accept it, she couldn't let it stay, if it was in her brain, she'd remove it, she'd burn it out, she'd-

When Kaguya eventually revived, there was a second burn hole underneath Eirin's screen, at the high where Kaguya's head had been. She had taken guilt down with her. It wasn't a matter of choice for her. She couldn't handle those kinds of thoughts, she really couldn't. But she was calmer now, able to think more clearly. No, Eirin was still the one to blame. Maybe she did enjoy the power, but she wouldn't have gone that far for it. This might have been a lie, so she then decided to take action, to convince herself. To prove Eirin wrong. It would shake up her little microcosm, but she needed this, and she was stubborn. Eirin was the enemy, the cause of Mokou's problems, and she'd make sure Mokou was aware of that.

She marched straight back into the room where Mokou was sleeping. "Wake up", she ordered, not even waiting before dragging her out of bed and onto the floor. "We're going around the ship. Together." _Yes, this wasn't so bad_. Maybe this was in her favour, after all : they now had a common enemy, a concrete one, not just Eternity itself. Someone to blame everything on. She walked at a brisk pace, dragging Mokou by the hand. Whenever they came across a screen, she'd destroy it. Finally, Mokou took the bait. "Why are you doing this ?", she asked, and at those words, Kaguya knew she had won. She spun her story of how the AI had kept her locked in a corridor this entire time, when she could have escaped into stasis. She riled Mokou up against the screens; "they're the reason you're suffered so much", "I was destroying them to get revenge for you. But maybe you'd like to join in ?" Of course, she left out the part about how it was _her fault_ the AI had done that. Mokou didn't need to know that. It wasn't important. And so, they went on a rampage together, destroying any screen they could see. Mokou's anger, the anger that had always made her so _alive_ , the burning heat that attracted Kaguya to her, now had a target : her suffering was no longer a vague, incomprehensible ordeal, but an act of malice by something concrete, an enemy, one that she could take out her fury on. Letting out fireball after fireball on her tormentor was cathartic : she could finally externalise her rage at something real, she finally had a target, and there was nothing she needed more than to be able to attack her suffering at its source. And Kaguya… _Kaguya !_ She had led her to this source ! She was on her side, after all ! Mokou's ferocity was back, and Kaguya loved it, loved her. She had sacrificed Eirin to Mokou's flames but it was worth it, oh so worth it. This was proof that Eirin was wrong, that Kaguya didn't want a passive Mokou that she could completely control. Eirin was wrong, Kaguya wasn't like that, this was proof. _Right ?_ She had destroyed something that was advantageous to her, to help Mokou. _Surely, this is enough proof, isn't it ?_

Standing amid the smoke and fire together, Mokou finally felt like she was starting to reconnect with Kaguya. She had known what Mokou needed, and provided it to her. It was more than she could ask for. She was _thankful_ to her.

And on her side, Kaguya smiled. Mokou was back. Mokou was in her debt. She had turned everything to her favour, once again. And she was barely even lying about anything. Best of all ? None of this was actually required of her. She could have let Mokou carry on being vulnerable, malleable, broken. She could have kept all the power to herself. Yet she didn't. She helped Mokou when she had no obligation to, nor any consequences if she hadn't. It was an act of utmost empathy towards Mokou. Kaguya was amazingly empathetic, compassionate. That, she was able to tell herself, despite everything. It felt good. And so, she smiled.


	4. Barriers

"Just give me some fucking space already, will you ?" Mokou's words : angry. Not the fiery anger like Kaguya was used to, but a snarl, acid, that melted through her defences instantly. The princess had had a smile on her lips, but that was gone, burnt off, leaving only a silent pain visible on her face (silent on the outside, but inside, screaming louder than any real sound ever could). _Give me space._ Those words echoed around the walls of Kaguya's skull, amplifying themselves each time, drowning out everything else until those words were her thoughts, her only thoughts, her entire existence at that very moment. _Give me space._ Mokou had just shoved a barrier between them, and she couldn't handle it.

This was her own fault. She had brought this upon herself. It was what she got, what she deserved, for being too kind. Generous to a fault, that had always been one of her main flaws, had it not ? She liked to tell herself that, but now, she was actually starting to believe it : she had evidence right in front of her. It was her, after all, who had given Mokou back her independence. Sacrificed the companionship of her mentor, sacrificed her complete control over Mokou, all so that Mokou could feel better, be less dependent, be freer. And sure, the last week or so had been amazing (was that how long it had been ? She couldn't tell : time with Mokou worked differently, it wasn't time that progressed but it was Mokou, through her speech, her actions and interactions, that moved time, giving structure to the days, giving something by which to measure them that actually mattered to Kaguya) : Mokou was speaking again. They could have conversations. She could interact with Mokou, instead of just acting _on_ her. Her toy, coming to life to play with her : a typical child's dream. She should be happy. She was, wasn't she ?

But Mokou was different to Kaguya, in some ways. As much as Kaguya hated it, they weren't the same person, not entirely. Kaguya knew patience, she knew how to be content with very little. She had sat in Eientei for a few centuries and had barely complained, had she not ? And she hadn't even had Mokou, back then. Kaguya didn't need much. Kaguya needed Mokou, and nothing else. Mokou needed _more_. Kaguya hated this more than anything ( _why aren't I enough for Mokou if she is enough for me ?_ The only way she could process this was as a failing on a personal level, one she didn't try to eradicate with self-improvement but by seeking more control, by forcing everything else to change.) Mokou couldn't simply sit still for long. She had been sitting still for three million years, and it was the worst torture she had ever gone through (but that was behind her, she didn't need to think about that any more, she didn't want to, she couldn't, because when she did her body froze up and her chest became tight and her brain started to fill up again with those millions of years of pain, swelling in her thoughts, too many painful memories for a healthy brain to take without finally bursting). So she wanted to explore the ship. This was fine. Kaguya was fine with that : after all, she could come with her. She could even show Mokou around : she knew the ship much better than her companion, she could be her guide, leading the way (claiming any positive effect this had on Mokou as hers, taking credit, emotional gratification). It was an activity : they were still interacting, but through something else. It still counted. Kaguya was fine with this.

But Mokou always had to push for more, to go one step too far. She just couldn't be content with anything reasonable, could she ? The _bitch._ Kaguya insulted her in her thoughts, angry, yet she kept it there, inside her head. Inside her, a jealous rage was melting her organs one by one, slowly reducing them to a pool of acid that was just waiting to be spat out, to burst out at the source of her anger. But the acid only ate at her from the interior, leaving the outside as "pleasant" as it could even be, leaving the smile on her face. After all, she knew herself, by now. She had been stuck with herself for far too long to not pick up a thing or two about herself along the way. She had learnt that, more than anything, she wanted to not be distant to Mokou. That what she needed wasn't to expel the acid within her (there was an infinite supply of that; she could spit it and spit it but there would always be more, she'd still be just as full of her caustic thoughts as when she started), what she needed was an antacid, one that came in the form of attention, interaction, exclusivity towards her. To get that, she needed to earn it. She couldn't insult Mokou, as much as she wanted to, because what she needed was her full attention. Mokou was the cure as well as the problem, the antivenom made from what was killing Kaguya in the first place. So as she melted inside, outside, she smiled; she was on her best behaviour. Kaguya hated feeling subservient to anyone; she was _the princess,_ she was the best, everyone else was beneath her, so she couldn't possible bow down to anyone. But _here_ (she always justified to herself in similar moments), _here_ , she wasn't being submissive to Mokou : she and Mokou were the same, more or less; she was, therefore, helping herself by containing her rage. Giving herself the treatment she deserved. It was for her own good, not anyone else's : she was in control. That's what she told herself.

But Mokou, Mokou always needed more, always needed to push her luck one step further ( _why couldn't she be content if I'm content I hate this I hate-_ ). Exploring was fine, but then, she just _had_ to go and find the dead crew's personal equipment. More specifically, their music : Mokou had, for some reason, taken a liking to listening to any and all music player she could find. No matter how Kaguya looked at it, it was a slap to the face, a massive _fuck you_ aimed at her, and she couldn't understand it. Mokou didn't even enjoy music. She had always avoided technology, to a reasonable extent. So why now ? She focused on that question, but with her tunnel vision, she could only see one answer : Mokou hated her, and this was her way of telling her that she was worse than something she had been avoiding all her life. _Bitch. I don't deserve this kind of treatment._ She didn't understand why this was happening to her (especially after everything she had done for Mokou !), but it _was_ happening, and she wanted to be the better person, "more mature", so she didn't lash out (what self-control !), she acted as agreeable as possible in response. _Soon, Mokou will feel guilty about the way that she's treating me. She'll be the one asking to be forgiven._

But the wait until then was _torture._ The acid had almost filled her to the brim; she was about to burst. And the headphones ! They were nothing like what she had experienced on Earth, centuries ago. These blocked out all external sound, making the music Mokou's entire world when she closed her eyes. _Instead of me._ It was a barrier between them, one that rejected her and everything she cared about. Couldn't Mokou see how cruel she was being ? She was rejecting her other half; block the flow of blood to a limb for long enough and it'll wither and fall off. She was amputating Kaguya in the slowest, most painful way. But Kaguya was strong. Her roots grew deep into Mokou's body. She wouldn't be severed that easily. So she persisted, gently but firmly. Reminding Mokou of her existence, not letting her forget it, through taps on the shoulder, the occasional question, anecdote. Trying to strike up conversation. Isn't that was _friends_ do ? she thought to herself, seeking validation where there was nobody to give it. But no, apparently not. Apparently, they tell you to _fuck off_. They stab you in the heart when you present it to them on a silver platter, using the dagger you gave to them in the first place. _This is what my generosity gets me, in the end._ Kaguya was still reeling from Mokou's words. _Give me space._ _I'll give her some fucking space. See how she likes having all the ship to herself when I'm floating dead in deep space, is that enough space for you, or should I also-_

Mokou had just put the headphones back on her ears : she had already moved on, whilst Kaguya hadn't even gotten past the initial shock. This was what pushed her to action, what burst the seams holding her back. Out came pouring all the acid, all the venom that had been stewing in her mind. Mokou only noticed that she was being insulted near the end of the rant. Temporarily empty of acid, hot tears of anger started filling the hole left inside her. She couldn't let Mokou see her like this. _She wants barriers ? I'll put half the fucking ship between us, see how she likes that._

Kaguya couldn't handle barriers. Not between her and Mokou. Not now, when they were finally together again (properly, for real, not with a _half-Mokou_ ). She thought Mokou would have felt the same way, she really did. Hadn't they been at their happiest when they had been at their most fused ? They didn't have to think of themselves as individuals, as a person, but as an interaction, an exchange. It had made eternity so much more tolerable. Hadn't Mokou felt the same way ? The way she now put barriers between them, it was like she was spitting on those memories, spitting on her very identity. _Well, too bad._ She had torn down barriers before. That's why they're there, to be broken. But right now, she didn't have the strength. She'd make a tactical retreat, gather her resources; right now, she was in too much pain. Why did Mokou have to do that ? Something burned deep within Kaguya, a feeling that made her want to tear Mokou apart, yet at the same time, gain her reassurance. She didn't want to admit that it could be jealousy. Not of a music player. She hadn't fallen that low, had she…? Like all thoughts that displeased her, she buried it alive in the festering dirt of her mind. No, it wasn't jealousy, and no, she wasn't losing. Quite the opposite ! By leaving like this, Kaguya was teaching Mokou a lesson, reminding her that she was the one who held the power (the power to hurt herself and those around her).

She had been wandering blindly, blinded by rage, blind to her own actions. Then she saw it, what she decided now was her destination : the boiler room. _This'll show her._ A smug look on her face, she entered it, making sure the door stayed open behind her. After all, she wasn't hiding. She wasn't really retreating to solitude to gather up her emotional resources, before returning, head cleared, to a healthy relationship. No, the filters needed to purify the stagnant waters of her mind had slowly been clogged up during her millennia of self-hating existence. Instead, she'd evacuate her negativity the only way she knew how : by passing it onto someone else, dragging them down with her, making them share her misery until they were the one strong enough to rise up again, to swim up and break the surface of those murky waters, finally breathing fresh air again. And of course, Kaguya would latch onto them, making the ascent that much harder; she was an emotional parasite, a leech that sucked other people's mental resources. Of course a leech like her would hate any kind of barriers between her and her main source of nutrition. She already felt like she was going to starve. So she was setting a trap for her prey. No need to expend energy on the hunt : make her prey come to her.

Because Kaguya knew, deep down, that Mokou had made a mistake, and was probably already regretting it. Kaguya had been _so nice_ to her. So surely, she couldn't _really_ think that whatever she was doing was more important that giving Kaguya the attention she so deserved, right ? It was inconceivable that one could be so selfish. She refused to entertain the notion. No, right now, Mokou was regretting treating Kaguya so poorly, and would soon be coming to look for her. She'd realised how wrong she had been to reject Kaguya so intensely, how cruel she had been, and so without even needing to do anything, Kaguya would have gotten her to come crying to her, begging for forgiveness. All she had to do was wait.

The boiler room wasn't one intended for most people to enter. It was poorly lit, hostile with its pipes spreading all over the room, emerging from a central boiling unit like veins from a heart. There were small railings to discourage people from getting too close to the heated metal, leaving only narrow walkways where you could move freely, safely. Kaguya went and sat near the middle of the room, under one of the dim yellow lights. It cast a shadow over her face thanks to her fringe, a shadow she thought set the mood perfectly. _Dramatic_. There was no way Mokou would be able to see her in this lighting without feeling guilty. It was almost too easy.

Time passed, measured in creaks in the metal pipes as they expanded and contracted from temperature change. Kaguya, however, stayed the same temperature : burning with anger. Yet the longer she stayed here, the longer she had to think about things, about _herself_.She didn't like that _._ She enjoyed thinking about herself when it came to pointless things, entertaining things, things that made her feel good about herself. She didn't like thinking about herself when there was a faint possibility that she might be wrong. _No, I'm not wrong, I've been wronged._ It's what she was telling herself, it's what she knew, but there was a small part within her that questioned that truth. That part was _weakness._ It was the part within her that was telling her that, if she craved attention so, she should go apologise to Mokou, take the blame, and attempt to engage in a healthy conversation. The part telling her to give up on waiting here for hours. _Weakness_. _No, I won't lose. I won't !_ In fact, Kaguya knew how to make her eventual victory even more crushing, satisfying. Channelling her anger (who was it even towards, at this point ?), she leapt over the railing, advancing towards the central boiler. She could feel the heat from over a metre away. _Is this what you wanted, Mokou ?_ In a decisive, swift movement, she extended her arm, pressing the palm of her hand onto the burning hot metal. There was a hiss, and the pain was instant. She could feel the heat burning the skin off her hand, damaging her flesh deeper and deeper (never deep enough to get to the source of her pain). She barely flinched. This was nothing compared to Mokou's flames (oh how she missed those !). When she thought the damage would be visible enough, she removed her hand. Sure enough, it was bright red, bleeding in places where the skin had peeled off, tearing itself away from her hand in an attempt to escape the heat, to escape the person who was inflicting it. _Even my own flesh doesn't want me. I don't want it either._ Satisfied, she went back to her place under the lighting, this time making sure her burnt palm was immediately visible. It was her spotlight, and she was performing her own play, written specifically for Mokou; "oh Mokou, Mokou, look at what you've done to me !"

Now, time passed in metal creaks and throbs of pain. It hadn't helped her, at all. She only felt angrier : now, Mokou had hurt her both emotionally and physically. _Why ?_ All Kaguya wanted to do was to be with her (constantly, for all eternity). She had given Mokou freedom, she had restored her into this world : Mokou basically owed her her life. So how _dare_ she. _How dare she have an existence outside of me !_ _How dare she exclude me, when the only reason she's even able to do anything in the first place is thanks to me !_ And yet, with a few words, she had erected barriers stronger than all of Kaguya's destructive force. By nature, they rejected any attempt she could have made to break them down by force : it would only have made Mokou rebuild them, even stronger each subsequent time. Her only way out of feeling terrible (because that's what it came down to; that's what it always came down to) was to get Mokou herself to lower the walls, to let her back in. But the waiting, the excruciating wait ! She felt like she had been deprived of oxygen this entire time, and that she was agonising on the floor, waiting for Mokou to restore her breath, the breath with which she'd pin the blame right back at her, make _her_ feel her pain, knock the wind out of her. Without the transferral of guilt, Kaguya would feel much too passive. She was no damsel in distress, she was fighting back, turning her opponent's strength against her. She wasn't just waiting to be saved, she was saving herself. _But, just in case…_ And idea had been gnawing away at her, and she succumbed to it : what if Mokou was looking for he, but couldn't find her ? Of course, it had to be that. It made a lot of sense : why else wouldn't she have come already ? _Poor, dumb Mokou !_ So, she'd give her a helping hand, since she was so kind. Letting loose some energy from her hand, a colourful blast of light and sound erupted out of the door, echoing around the stillness of the Red Dwarf. There was no way Mokou wouldn't have heard that, as she wandered, lost, around the corridors. Now, she'd be on her way.

Except, she wasn't. She never showed up. Kaguya's brief hope that she had solved the problem gave way only to more burning anger, and so she gave up (not of the fight, she would never admit to giving up on that; she instead told herself she was giving up on Mokou. That it was Mokou who had failed.) But she wouldn't go down without one last act of spite. Leaping once more over the railings, she flung her entire body against the boiler, searing her skin, punishing herself in order to punish Mokou. The side of her face that was pressed against the boiler was the most affected, the soft skin destroyed under the heat, turning her face into a mask of anger and pain, as repulsive as the motivations that led to it. She wanted her pain to be visible, to be broadcasted, so that they would become one again, reunited by pain, by guilt. Kaguya would take anything, as long as she didn't have to be alone, a single person, singularly responsible. And so, suitably disfigured, she returned to the bedroom. She'd be loud when entering, making her presence known, attracting attention to herself and to her pain. She'd get her sympathy, her validation. Her attention, no matter what form it took. She'd be able to breathe again. And yet, she was greeted with an empty room. No signs of life, not even the usual snoring. Mokou wasn't here. Brief hope : _was she looking for me, after all ?_ But then, she checked the bed : on it, was only written "gone until morning. Don't look for me."

Kaguya screamed. It was a scream of defeat; of all the possible outcomes, this was the worst. The barriers between them had only gotten wider. Mokou hadn't fallen into her traps. It had all been for nothing. By morning, the elixir would have stripped her of all her wounds, making her horribly healthy once again, healthy on the outside. And if there was nobody to witness her pain, what was even the point ? She had lost, thoroughly, painfully. And so she had no choice but to admit defeat, and go to sleep, or at least to force herself into unconsciousness. To forget about it, block this whole night out of her mind. Pretend nothing had happened, when she next saw Mokou. After all, her body would forget soon enough. Her pain had been for nothing. Her tears stung against the burnt flesh of her cheeks.


	5. Gravity

Gravity

"Just give me some fucking space already, will you ?" Mokou had done it : she had snapped at Kaguya. At the same time, something else had snapped open : the seed of worry that had been nestled inside her for the last few weeks. Worry had overtaken her other emotions (what other emotions ? She already couldn't remember; it was like this worry was all she had ever felt), it had taken over her actions, acted for her. After all, she had been falling without realising it for quite some time; this worry was like the sudden fear when you feel like you're falling whilst drifting off to sleep. A jolt; suddenly fighting gravity in a terrible return to reality. Mokou had been drifting off into a state of semi-unconsciousness : she felt herself slowly fusing with Kaguya once more, drifting into her. Consciousnesses merging, muddying, then re-emerging as something more beautiful, something that didn't quite seem possible, if she hadn't experienced it before. The dream of fusion with Kaguya : the dream of never being alone, never having to be limited to your own body, your own thoughts. The dream of being able to get something out of immortality, to somehow benefit from this curse. But she had lurched against it. Stopped the fall, fought Kaguya's gravity, and now she was wrenched back into reality, cold sweat on her forehead, making sense of the dark room around her that she had almost escaped through unconsciousness. But the fear didn't subside in the following seconds, nor was she ready to start slipping back into slumber, laughing off the silly fear of falling that her mind had accidentally conjured up. Kaguya was standing in front of her, very real. Just as the threat of falling into the bottomless pit of fusion was real. The fear stayed. She needed it to remain herself.

On a less conscious level, she had been fighting Kaguya's gravity ever since she snapped back into her timescale. The force had been constant : Kaguya was always around, dragging small parts of her into her pull, inescapably present. So she tried doing things that weren't Kaguya. She thought that was possible, at first. This was only because she hadn't yet fully adjusted to her new reality. She wanted to explore the ship : Kaguya tagged along. She didn't think this would be a problem. After all, she may hate Kaguya, but she loves her, too. But exploring with Kaguya only made the princess's gravity stronger. Mokou wasn't exploring a new world, the world that she'd probably be spending the rest of existence in : she was exploring Kaguya's world. Everywhere she went, Kaguya seemed to know it already. Giving the guided tour was like her way of showing that she had already marked her territory, already been here, claimed it as hers. Mokou had her corridor, of course, but she couldn't go back there. She didn't want to. Anything but that. Then, there were the lower decks, the dark, dingy floors she had worked on whilst Kaguya lived the good life up top : she knew those floors better, but there was nothing for them, there. Everywhere else, the _real_ parts of the ship, already seemed to be claimed by Kaguya. The Red Dwarf, floating in deep space as it was, was Mokou's entire (available) universe : the boundary she'd never be able to break free from, the hard limit of her exploration. And so, her universe slowly revealed itself to be Kaguya's. She was in Kaguya's world, where everything perfectly aligned itself to make them fuse, to make Mokou dependant of her. There was no escaping Kaguya : she was the entire universe, her gravity was absolute. But she tried to resist anyway. She wasn't really sure why. Because she thought it was the right thing to do ? Or just out of stubbornness ? Mokou was nothing if not stubborn.

And since the present was Kaguya, she sought traction against her pull in the past. It hadn't seemed like an important discovery, at first, when she stumbled across the audio devices of the ship's dead crew. That was because she hadn't understood quite what they had been used for, when she and Kaguya had gone smashing open the lockers (a treasure trove filled with dead people's goods; usually, Mokou would have liked to think that she'd respect the dead and leave them alone, but right now, she needed distraction. Anyway, _they_ were allowed to be dead. _Lucky bastards_.) She had grabbed a few out of curiosity, wanting to sample the kind of music they listened to. It would have kept her occupied, for a short time. A small amount of force pulling in the opposite direction to that of Kaguya's gravity. But then, she explored further. Found out that it also contained vocal recordings, to themselves and to each other. Snapshots of the past that had been torn away from her. Its gravity increased immensely.

It turned out to be what Mokou imagined must have been the equivalent to mobile phones for the crew of the Red Dwarf; she was never much one for technology, so she was far from being up to date on this sort of thing. She didn't tell Kaguya about this. She let her believe it was simply music : she knew that wouldn't interest her (would dead people's messages even interest her ? She only really cared about herself). This was Mokou's. _Hers._ Her way of travelling back through time to a universe less empty. Only there could she escape the gravity that was constantly tugging at her, only there could she release her tired muscles from the constant strain of fighting a fight she wasn't sure that she really wanted to win.

And so, she invaded dead people's privacy for her own personal benefit. There were messages of all kinds, messages voiced under the assumption that they were safe within the devices, behind the lockers, behind the wall of common decency that forbade people to intrude in such a way. That false assumption made the messages all the more vibrant, alive. There were back-and-forth messages shit-talking one of the captains ( _"he only carries that massive gun to compensate, you know."_ ) Others logging the increasing anxiety about leaving everything behind when they boarded the Red Dwarf ( _"as I look at the sea of stars before me, I feel like I should be impressed, that I should find them beautiful. Alas, how can I enjoy this sight when I can't shake the feeling that it's all I'm ever going to see, from now until I die ?"_ Mokou felt like Kaguya would have found that one funny.) Other remained as a footprint of the crew's personal affairs, the loves and lusts that were born from the forced proximity and the feeling that the people here were all they'd ever be getting, for a long time, at least : a sort of frantic feeling like they had to "make the most" of their situation, otherwise they'd somehow be "missing out" ( _"don't worry about him, he's back on Earth. He'll never know. We might as well enjoy ourselves. What's the harm ?"_ ) These were voices, voices other than her own or Kaguya's. When she listened to them, they split the universe apart : it was no longer entirely Kaguya, it was Kaguya but also these people she'd never know yet knew intimate details about, details that nobody else knew. It let her trick herself into feeling some kind of emotional intimacy with someone other than Kaguya (as if that were possible for her, at this point). She claimed all of this as her own, shutting Kaguya out. It wasn't hard with the headphones she'd found. The present was entirely Kaguya's, so she called dibs on the past. She wanted to reclaim it, to compensate for the time she'd lost. She had been barely alive for millennia, but now, she got to live vicariously through these snippets of other's lives. She'd fill in the (many) blanks, make up stories, start to intertwine them using the few details she had. She made up other people's lives to compensate for the gaping hole in hers. It kept her distracted. That was what was important, right ?

And yet, her distraction was never complete : Kaguya's gravity kept trying to drag her into the present, to trap her in its inescapable pull : she was always around, trying to intrude, to worm her way into this world that was hers. Mokou had fortified the entrance, erected defences that even Kaguya couldn't get through; and yet, Kaguya's words were a beautiful wooden horse waiting at the gate of her world. A sign of friendship, a gift. Would it really be such a problem to let her in…?

But this wasn't about what she wanted. This was about what she needed, and right now, what she needed was to be able to exist outside of Kaguya, even vicariously. It was the right thing to do. And so she had yelled at her, rejected her, and now she was gone. Something with that amount of gravity suddenly leaving couldn't do so without consequences, of course : it dragged away a large portion of Mokou with it, leaving her emptier. _Not emptier_ , _lighter. This is what I want._ And so she remained in the dark, contemplating her sudden freedom. What can a moon do but drift aimlessly, when broken from its orbit ? Her thoughts drifted for a few minutes, replaying their interaction again and again, until she focused. She had to move. Eventually, Kaguya would come back here, and the distance would only have served to increase her gravity thanks to the added weight of guilt (Kaguya would want her to feel guilt, and it would work, if she were here. She refused to let that happen. _No feeling guilty allowed, this is what I want.)_ She didn't want to be here when that happened. Maybe it was the millions of years spent alone, craving for interaction, that affected her, because now her power to stand up to Kaguya was so much weaker than it had been. She was aware of this, and so, rather than risk the loss, she'd refuse to fight. A tactical retreat. She gathered up the devices she'd been listening to : her destination was already clear to her.

Kaguya knew the ship well. Better than Mokou did, obviously. That was one of her advantages, one that would probably never level itself out. But Kaguya took this advantage as a given; she was complacent. Mokou was the underdog : she had the drive, she had to work harder if she was ever going to overcome the power imbalance. That's why she paid attention to the details that Kaguya overlooked. Oh yes, she was all about details nowadays, trying to find them even when they weren't there. Kaguya thought she was clever, following Mokou around, acting like she owned the place, but whilst she was distracted giving her pointless, ego-driven lectures, Mokou had found something she had been wanting to investigate ever since. The immortals' rampage against Eirin had left consequences to the ship : mostly burnt screens and charred walls, but behind one particularly big screen, upon revisiting it, Mokou thought that she could see a space behind it, a gap big enough for a person. She'd soon find out.

The screen was smashed, the plastic warped by the heat of Mokou's fire. She had been angry, that day. Anger was better than sadness. The top half of the screen hung slightly off the wall, as if it had given up, let itself go. Mokou stood up straight in front of it. She would not give up. Cracking her knuckles, she grabbed a side of the screen and pulled. It protested weakly, before giving way with a snap. She smiled (it felt unnatural to smile, like she had lost the muscle memory of doing so, and instead was moving each muscle individually) : sure enough, there was a space behind the screen. Looking at it, she presumed there must have been a bulkier piece of equipment here, before it got replaced with this smaller screen. Replacing it had only made it look nicer on the outside; inside, it had left a gaping hole. Not wanting to dwell on that thought, Mokou crawled in. There was enough space for her to sit against one side, her legs half extended in front of her. Her standards were low : she considered this to be comfortable. But she wasn't finished yet : the light of the room still poured into her space. Grabbing the broken screen, she pulled it towards her, and it swung back into place. _Finally._ Finally, she was no longer in Kaguya's universe. She had made her own. Yes, it was small, it was dark. There was no room for anyone else here, but that was part of the charm. In here, she was finally free from Kaguya's gravity. She planned to enjoy her time here.

Free from distraction, free from the existence of anything else around her, she could now fully engage herself in her favourite pastime. Getting out one of the devices, she was ready to start listening. The screen flickered on : the first star to show its light in this new universe of hers. She'd start a new one, delve into a new life, discover a new story. Be proportionally less empty. With a feeling of excitement, she started the recordings. She closed her eyes, letting herself travel. The sound began to play : this one was a soft voice, spoken in a light-hearted tone. Addressing a friend, probably ? Mokou didn't mind the lack of context, nor needing to fill in the blanks. If anything, it made this whole process all the more _hers._ Fictionalising a reality to turn it into her own work. She'd never been much of an artist, but she could now see the appeal of creating stories. Making universes of her own, already removed enough from reality that nothing real could ever take them away from her. Her isolation would have been slightly more tolerable if she had had access to enough of these, during that time.

The words kept on coming : the speaker was a doctor, from what Mokou had gathered. She was talking to her best friend, about nothing in particular. There were large gaps in the conversation, presumably where they had met in person. There were inside jokes, inaccessible to an eavesdropper like Mokou. It didn't matter : she gave them meaning. She could do that : this was her universe, she made the rules. She had power, here; power she was sorely lacking in Kaguya's universe. Was it power she was seeking ? She wanted to fix the imbalance, that much was obvious : their relationship wasn't right when the power was on one side for so long. Kaguya wasn't fighting for it. Mokou didn't want her to get lazy.

The tone of the recordings was shifting slightly : in the dark, focused only on her thoughts and the voices, Mokou picked up on any shifts, no matter how small. After all, wasn't that her job, to be attentive ? Worry crawled its way through the words, into her ears. Worry without context : a mystery event causing the doctor grief. A _plot point._ Mokou felt a spark of excitement. Would she find out what the cause of the worry was, or would she have to invent it ? Either way, it would be interesting to her. After all, in her current life, there were no such events. No changes that would lead to new developments, nothing wild that would change her life. Only permanent stagnation, none of these plot points she enjoyed in the recording. She was glad it wasn't her own life she was listening in to : how _terribly boring_ that would be.

Now, the doctor's friend's turn to reply : she was mentioning _duty_ and _obligations._ Mokou had none of those. Not anymore : it was similar ideas that had let to her being cursed with immortality. They had done enough damage, so she'd let them die, leaving them behind in time. They had been her reason to live, for a while : her reason to fight Kaguya, until that had lost all meaning and then become meaning in itself. Now, duty and honour were mistakes that she was still paying the price for. Would the doctor make the same mistake ? As the exchange continued, the situation became clearer : the Red Dwarf had stopped off near a small colony for a while, on which the doctor had gotten herself into a wild romance. Now, she couldn't stop thinking about the person she'd met, and was considering stealing an escape pod to go meet up with them. Her friend, apparently more grounded, was reminding her of her duties as a doctor, how she couldn't abandon her patients over something so unreasonable. _"You're a doctor. You know by now to follow your mind, not your heart."_ Mokou was letting herself get enthralled by the drama, siding with whoever was talking at the time. She wanted to only think of this, to forget that there was anything outside of her universe. To forget her own choices, her own anxieties. These two voices were all that mattered right now; knowing what happened next was all that was important.

Yet this particular chapter of their story seemed to be reaching a close. The doctor's voice had lost the anxious passion with which she had stated the importance of seeing her lover again. The flame that had been ignited within her hadn't had any substantial fuel to burn from, besides a few passionate night spent together; with nothing new feeding it, it had quickly burnt out. Especially with her friend dousing it with what she called "reason". And so, the doctor decided to stay. _"You're right, as usual. I can't just drop everything I've worked so hard for just on a flight of fancy. Staying here is the right thing to do."_ Things settled themselves down. Mokou got a conclusion without needing to invent it herself : this always left a bittersweet feeling about her. Her characters were deciding things by themselves. _They grow up so fast._ The doctor's friend sealed the chapter closed with a promise : _"I know it's sad, but you're right. It's the right thing to do. I'm proud of you. How about we meet up for a coffee tomorrow ? It'll be my treat."_ Now that the drama was over, she could settle back and listen to some more regular conversations : she expected more joking around, more hints at events going on in their lives. Character building, as she liked to consider it; not filler. It was only filler if she couldn't give it any meaning, if she couldn't turn the conversations into anything bigger than they were. But she was the goddess of this universe, she could create meaning wherever she wished. Nothing needed to be _happening_ for her to extrapolate a world's worth of meaning from it. If she wanted, she could imagine hours worth of meaning from a few sentences. She had that power.

And yet, where were those sentences ? Mokou noticed the abnormally long pause between messages. Worried, she opened her eyes, checking the screen (was it time for divine intervention to get things going again ?) But no : she had arrived at the last recording. It was over. _The fuck…?_ She refused : she was enjoying this story. She didn't want it to end so suddenly. She refreshed the list, reopened the app, but sure enough, that was the end. Anger was starting to well up inside her : wasn't this supposed to be her universe ? Well then, she could always make up the rest by herself : she had that power, too. Still, she wasn't happy about it. It obviously wasn't the first time an abrupt end like this had occurred (in fact, all of them ended without a good reason), but in this small, dark space, she had been more invested, she had managed to trick herself into thinking what she was doing actually meant something, so she wanted a reason, a justification as to why- _oh._

She had just noticed the date of the last recording. A date she'd always remember, for it marked the last day of her freedom. It was the day before the radiation leak eradicated the crew and left her to suffer for so, so long. The instant she saw that date, she felt all power leave her. Goddess of her universe ? Delusions of grandeur, at best. She was wrong : she wasn't creating anything, she wasn't doing anything meaningful at all. Her "characters" ? They had no room to grow, to take shape : they were all already dead. Their ending had been decided before she even started getting to know them; they were limited, hardcoded to end before they even properly began. And of course, it wasn't by her : this limit was an external source, it came from Kaguya's universe. She was wrong to think she could have her own space, separate from Kaguya's. Her universe would always be a subset of Kaguya's, and this killing off of her characters was its way of reminding her of that. Reminding her that she'd never escape the princess's gravity. Empty, she withdrew into the silence that had been imposed upon her. Meaningless. That's what her universe was. She could still fantasize about alternate possibilities : what if the doctor had followed her heart, instead of doing _what was right ?_ She'd be alive and living with her lover. Or at least, she would have, three million years ago. The worst possible ending had been chosen for her, without Mokou's consent. Thinking about other possibilities didn't help : it only made the truth hurt more. Besides, it didn't matter. By now, the outcome would always be the same : they'd all be dead. For all she knew, all of humanity was dead, by now. Nothing mattered. She couldn't found a universe solely from long gone memories.

Eventually, the battery died. The first and final star : it had only lasted a few hours. Emptiness was filling up with anger. She had tried, oh so hard, to do the right thing. She had tried so very hard to resist Kaguya's gravity, to make something of herself, _for_ herself. Her efforts had been spat on, trampled, and kicked back in her face. _Well, fuck this._ It wasn't like she wanted to do the right thing. Doing the right thing doesn't actually reward you, not in this universe. No, she was done with that. No more resisting : it was too tiring, for no reward. It was time for her to get -no, to _take_ \- what she wanted. Kicking down the screen, she allowed the two universes to fuse back into one. They always were, really. Fusion was how it should be. She had attempted independent control, and she had failed. She thought she had wanted it; she was scared to surrender control, after being trapped for so long without any. But she had been mistaken : she had never had any control to lose. She had been fighting over nothing this whole time. Her only option was fusion; shared control from the inside. Being half of a whole. It's what she wanted, no use denying it now. Nothing other than Kaguya had any meaning in this universe anyway : it was time to embrace that.

She stormed into the bedroom : Kaguya had eventually returned, it seemed. Was she sleeping ? Not for long. "Wake up", Mokou barked, not giving Kaguya the time to actually do so. Without waiting, she climbed onto Kaguya's bed, straddled her, and started stripping. "Not a word from you. I want this, so do you, so let's just fucking do it and cut the crap." Kaguya's surprise, seemingly mixed with a deep sadness, didn't last long, quickly being replaced by a smug smile of victory. Mokou swiftly buried it between her thighs. No use feeling bad about this anymore. She wasn't giving up, she was just ending a battle that had no reason to be fought. What she was giving up was useless pretences. So what if she just wanted to fuck Kaguya senseless ? There was nothing better to do in this universe. There was nothing better for _her_ to do : she was only half of a whole. Independence and control had both died millions of years ago. Now, all that existed was Kaguya and her gravity. It was time to succumb to it.


	6. Explosions

There hadn't been an explosion in a long time.

Months had passed since Mokou had accepted fusion with Kaguya. A certain stability had fallen over them; not a restful peace, no sense of fulfilment or plenitude that could arise from a resolution of one's deep-rooted problems, it was simply a lack of anything explosive. No big events, no changes, just a status quo that had forced itself on them without their explicit consent. Yes, Kaguya had agreed, even orchestrated the fusion, but she hadn't consented to all that followed, this stillness; it was it was much more than she was comfortable with. It was as if they had missed an important conclusion, but were living in a state that built upon that conclusion anyway, somehow.

There hadn't been any explosions. Time had been passing, without much to indicate that it had passed. The seconds added up, insignificant, yet when they looked back at them, weeks had passed.

Mokou sunk her weight into and armchair. Comfort, on a physical level. She then sank herself into the comfort of recollection : she viewed all the seconds that she had let pile up unnoticed, then converted them into a whole (a week and a half had gone by without her noticing). She wasn't concerned, though : quite the opposite. She wasn't disconnected from time, nor was she experiencing too much or too little to be able to comprehend it, as she had before. Instead, she smiled. Time simply hadn't done anything to make itself noticed to her. She hadn't suffered enough to be reminded of her own existence, her existence outside of Kaguya. She had let herself sink into the comfort of fusion, comfort both physical and psychological.

Compared to most of her life, that was an achievement. She had been scared to let herself fall back into this lifestyle (existence always in vague proximity; fights to the death for entertainment; fucking each other whenever they felt like it; a somewhat shared suffering numbed by each other's existence), but now that she had taken the plunge, she couldn't help but question why she hadn't done so earlier. Not that hindsight tormented her in the slightest : the few months where she and Kaguya had been together but not fused weren't even an observable fraction in her timeline. She was content. She could accept the status quo. She currently wasn't fighting anything.

And then, there was Kaguya. Kaguya, who had gotten everything she had wanted. She had had the ideal situation to keep Mokou in, she had worn her down enough for them to fuse once again, all that after crediting herself for fixing Mokou's problems. She had it great. She had won. She should have been happy, and she knew it.

And yet Kaguya couldn't settle for what she had. She couldn't accept any status quo. She couldn't just let herself be _happy_.

She had had a goal, one that she had put all her effort into working towards. It had gotten her hurt, mentally and physically, but she didn't care about that. She had already forgotten any pain, both to herself and to others, that had been caused by her scheming. All she remembered was the entertainment it had procured her : she had been stimulated, she had had successes that she could glorify in her mind, which she could then use to make herself feel superior over. Her mind was letting her remember something positively, for once, but only because she then tortured herself over the memory.

Right now, she had achieved the most stability she could realistically hope to attain (in a ship floating in deep space, millions of years after everyone she had known on Earth had died, with only Mokou for company as they drifted forever in the void); she had what she wanted, she wasn't overwhelmingly miserable. She couldn't complain.

She had no right. Everything had lined up in her interests, and the situation she had gotten herself into was of her own design. Everything was telling her to just _shut up and be content._ But she was restless.

She was used to explosions : creating them, experiencing them. They shattered her and the world around her, created fissures in eternity's unwavering, straight line that would otherwise continue to be traced forever, unbroken. She hadn't realised it consciously at the time, but she enjoyed blowing things up so that she could slowly put them back together again. It gave her something to do, broke the monotony. Let her exercise her _creative side._ Destructive action was preferable to forced inaction, inaction forced upon her by nothing other than the idea that there was such a thing as a state that she should she rest in forever, an _ideal state._

However, she had fused with Mokou. It was a reciprocal affair; fusion wasn't possible if it was unrequited. She had become a part of Mokou as much as Mokou had become a part of her. She loved her deeply (or, as deeply as she was capable of). Right now, she felt like she didn't want to make her unhappy. Not deliberately. She watched her other half sitting in an armchair, head back, eyes closed. _Was that a faint smile on her face ?_

"Mokou ?" she asked, surprising herself.

"Hmm ?" the other immortal responded, eyes still closed.

"Are you ok ?" She hadn't meant to say that. In theory, it was what she was trying to ask, but said like that, it sounded like small talk, a triviality. She really wanted to know if Mokou was ok in a general sense, with her current status. Ok with accepting things as they were, with the lack of change. But that wasn't what she had asked, so all she got was an affirmative grunt in response. She didn't press further. She knew neither of there were ever truly going to be ok; the real question would have been _do you want change ?_

But she didn't ask that. She knew the answer. This was the least miserable she had seen Mokou in a long time (longer still, if she took Mokou's life into account, the millions of years she had managed to skip). Mokou wouldn't want to ruin that; she'd be clinging on to this lack of misery as long as she could. She wasn't like Kaguya. _She didn't need the same kind of intellectual stimulation. She was content with less_. Was that a hint of contempt in her thoughts…? Kaguya noticed it; it bothered her.

"I'm going for a walk. I'll be back soon." She needed to remove herself from this situation. She recognised the start of resentful thoughts festering within her, and she didn't want them to take root. Fusion with Mokou had helped, in that sense. Given her a bit more self-awareness, thanks to allowing more of an external viewpoint of herself. She got up, and left the room. Only, her capabilities of self-care ended there : now, she found herself unsure of what happened next.

Distraction was needed, that much was obvious. And so after some consideration, she knew where to find it. A secret she had still kept to herself, during fusion. An advantage, a shame. She was going to visit Eirin.

Deep down in the ship, far from their shared living quarters, a screen hooked up to the central AI remained intact. It might not have been the only one - in fact, that would be unlikely, considering the size of the Red Dwarf - but it was one that she was certain about, one that, during the heat of the moment, during the fire and energy of their shared destruction, she had still chosen to overlook, to spare from destruction. _Mercy_ , she had lied to herself at the time, convincing nobody. _An advantage,_ that's what it really was. A breach of trust based of a _could be useful later._ There were still walls between them, at the time. That was her excuse. _But now ?_

Now, she was using it to protect Mokou. That was her new excuse. She needed a distraction, something to explode, but she didn't want _consequences_. She was once again faced with the problem of wanting to break something, without it _being broken._ So why not take her emotions out on that which _couldn't_ be broken ? It was the next best thing. A punching bag, of sorts.

"Eirin ?" she demanded upon entering the room. They hadn't talked since the rampage, yet this was still the level of courtesy Kaguya felt Eirin deserved. "Are you there ?" A few seconds passed without any reaction from the screen. Kaguya glared at where she thought the camera was. "Aren't you supposed to be watching over us or something ?" This got a reaction : a flicker, followed by Eirin's face displaying itself on the screen.

"Did you not request that I refrain from doing so ?" The sage's expression was somehow perfectly neutral : no joy at being able to talk to someone again, no anger at the fact she was used as a scapegoat.

"And yet, you responded," Kaguya replied, her words filled with contempt. Unreasonable, as she was well aware : whether Eirin had appeared or not would have led to scorn under one pretext or another. Eirin seemed to quickly catch on to the princess's intentions, taking on a tired yet resolute tone.

"What can I help you with, Princess ?"

"Why don't you tell me. What are you even here for, any more ? Haven't you done enough ?" She wasn't trying to carefully construct her sentences to leave verbal traps, to prove a point, or even to make much sense. She was on the level of a bratty child being rude for attention, and she knew it. She didn't consider more effort to be necessary. After all, Eirin wasn't even real. Why bother with mind games when faced with someone without a mind ? Empty punches aimed at a lifeless punching bag, that was all it was.

"I assure you, I still have my uses, Princess. I correct the ship's course to avoid any obstacles, I run system checks to make sure everything is working properly - it would be a shame if you ran out of oxygen, for example, wouldn't it ? - and I generally make sure nothing will interfere with how you're choosing to live. Is that all you wanted to know ?" Eirin's tone was decidedly less polite than the other times they had talked. The few months alone must have been enough for her to realise that reverence wasn't required for her to perform what she had been programmed to do.

Kaguya didn't reply straight away; instead, she came to sit on the nearest surface in front of the screen. She was hesitant : she had no planned approach, no endgame in mind, just emotions with a need for resolution. Eventually, she spoke.

"And… how exactly have I been choosing to live, Eirin ? Can you tell me that ?" There was less insolence now, more of a sense of foreboding in her voice. There were no right answers here.

"Considering how I set everything up to be ideal for you, you should be living exactly the way you wanted to : a state of fusion with Mokou . Am I wrong ?" Kaguya noted that Eirin carefully avoided confirming or denying that she still was able to monitor what they were doing. She wouldn't get a straight answer if she had pressed that point, so she didn't want to waste time trying.

"No, you're… not wrong. You helped give me everything I wanted…" She let her voice trail off; a clear sign of unfulfilment.

"And yet, you summoned me. Did you fail, somehow, or was _everything you wanted_ just not good enough for you, _Princess ?_ "Eirin's tone was almost mocking, at this point. Kaguya's features slowly started contorting with anger ( _resentment ?_ ).

"Why the fuck would you give me everything I wanted ? Are you stupid ? You know how caustic I am. You know I can't be happy, not anymore. You know happiness melts when it comes in contact with me. Were you trying to ruin my best shot at being happy, by letting it destroy itself against me ?" Eirin smiled and shook her head. She was used to handling Kaguya's destructive nature. She had had to learn, over the years. Right now, Kaguya was trying to project the blame onto her, an easy target, a target that wouldn't matter. It would be a lot simpler, a lot less painful in the short term. But eternity made anything short-term irrelevant. Eirin had to dig deeper, to get under her skin.

"You're giving me too much power, Princess. I merely gave you the tools to gain everything you wanted. If you're still unhappy… Maybe you've been using them wrong." Kaguya grit her teeth, holding back the urge to smash the screen. _Not worth her effort in a conversation ?_ No, Kaguya had underestimated Eirin, somehow. Forgotten that even as an AI, she was just as smart as the real one. It was convenient to think of her as a mere machine with it came to using her then abandoning her, but when face to face with her, she couldn't let her guard down. Already, she had managed to deflect the blame back at her, the blame she was trying to offload in the first place.

"No, I got what I wanted. I'm living with Mokou, just like I did back in Eientei…"

"And so, what seems to be the problem ? Is that no longer enough for you, Princess ?" Eirin was enjoying this, Kaguya could tell. Still, Eirin was useful, or would be useful, so she just had to grit her teeth and bear it.

"The problem… the problem is that everything is too uneventful. Stale. Nothing new, nothing explosive."

"I _do apologize_ if the vacuum of space isn't entertaining enough for you, Princess. Maybe you'd like to visit the nearest black hole ? That might be a bit more exciting. We could be there in a few millennia if we hurry."

"If we entered it, could we die ?"

"In horrible amounts of pain, over and over again. Your suffering would be endless; you'd never escape it."

"Nothing new there, then."

"So, shall I plot a course for it, Princess ?" Kaguya simply chuckled in response. She was starting to enjoy the more confrontational Eirin : it was more distracting, it let her retaliate better. It reminded her less of the guilt-written wreck she had fled from, left behind on Earth. Her smile faded when she realised that Eirin probably knew this, and had adapted to better serve her purpose.

"Eirin, I'm bored. I need _more_. Happiness isn't good enough for me, apparently."

"In that case, the ship has quite a lot to offer in the way of entertainment, Princess. For example, there are some virtual reality games in the recreation bay, said to simulate your wildest dreams. Maybe you could try one, lose yourself in it ?"

"No, I… I've tried them before. Can't seem to get them to work." It had been a rather boring experience : as soon as she launched the game, she was greeted with a black screen and the words _You Died_ written in a bold, white font. No matter what she tried, the "respawn" option that was presented to her just wouldn't work. She concluded that they must have been broken. "What I need is change, where it matters. Entertainment that'll stimulate me properly."

"And yet, _what matters_ to you means only one thing. The one thing you supposedly had under control. Am I to understand that you are not fully satisfied by your relationship with Mokou ?" They had begun to orbit the point of this entire visit. It made Kaguya start to feel on edge.

"No, I am, and yet that's… the problem, too."

"No more explosions ?"

"That's the simple explanation, I suppose."

"And yet, you're _so good_ at causing them, princess. You're like fuel that only needs the smallest spark to ignite, consuming everything around you. Don't tell me, you're having trouble finding that spark ? Usually, Mokou is more than sufficient…"

Kaguya looked away from the screen. The more they talked, the more she realised that what she really wanted wasn't achievable through Eirin. _The next best thing_ simply wasn't good enough. She always had been terrible at compromising. Hitting a punching bag would never give the same thrill as knocking someone down.

"I need conflict, Eirin. I need to be able to destroy, so that I may have the power to re-create. I've achieved stability; it's what Mokou wanted, so it felt like it was what I wanted, too. And it still is ! In a way. As you said, I'm volatile enough to find a spark when I need one. To create one, if necessary. But Mokou has suffered. She's worked so hard for this stability. If I do something that shatters it irreparably, I…. I'd have lost more than I had gained, I think. I don't know how to reconcile the urge to break her with the fact that I don't want her to remain broken." Kaguya felt her skin crawl. She knew how good she was at not being self-aware, most of the time. She knew the atrocities she had committed under the guise of ignorance, the power she had given herself by twisting the truth to fit the way she wanted it to be. But faced with Eirin, she was having to express her _true feelings_ , and seeing them lain out in front of her like that, knowing they had came out of her mouth, out from deep inside her, was nothing but repulsive to her.

"I see," Eirin said pensively. "Isn't that why you fight and fuck each other to death, though ? For entertainment ? For stimulation ?"

"It's true, they provide both of those things. But they don't provide _change._ They're almost routine, they're… _accepted_. I need change, Eirin." Eirin closed her eyes, clearly thinking for a while.

"Well then, you need to make one thing clear within yourself, Princess. Answer me this : if everything carried on the way it was now - stability, bordering on contentment - for the foreseeable future, how would you feel about it ?" Kaguya took a moment to imagine what she was being asked. She quickly had an answer, but she pretended to think for longer than she needed to, to try to convince herself that the answer wasn't quite so easy to arrive at.

"I… would hate it. I couldn't handle that, Eirin. I need my friction, my rough patches. I need my explosions." Eirin nodded, clearly having already planned a follow-up question.

"And so now, tell me this : is it Mokou you don't want to break… or is it only your current relationship with her that you need to remain intact ?" This question took Kaguya by surprise, until it settled on her, comforting, enabling. Eirin had found the words she had been looking for. The loophole that let her be the horrible person she enjoyed being too much to be able to quit, without needing to suffer any negative consequences. She felt the guilt, the repulsion she had felt towards herself, transfer itself away from her, onto Eirin. _Let her be the one who is responsible. She's enabling this, she's the one to blame._

"The relationship. I need to be able to break Mokou, without breaking our current relationship."

"Well then," Eirin said, not attempting to hide her grin, "let me once again hand you the tools to your happiness".

Mokou noticed Kaguya return to the living quarters after some time had passed. How much time, she couldn't say : time away from Kaguya didn't have much to indicate its passing. An absence was felt; not so much a sadness, or anything particularly concrete, but an interruption she was only really aware of when she noticed it ending.

"Had a nice walk ?" she asked, not particularly interested in her reply.

"Sure," she responded. "As nice as a bunch of corridors can be." Kaguya's mind was brimming over in anticipation. She had a plan that had started to boil within her, and upon seeing Mokou,, the bubbles had started to froth over, unable to be contained under the lid of her mind. But the boiling of the water wasn't indicative of how well prepared the contents of the pot were; they were premature, a mark of amateurism. She had to lift the lid, let it simmer down for a while longer.

She came to lie down on the sofa in front of where Mokou was sitting. She let herself stretch out, languorously, seductively. She had time. She was in control. She had a plan, she just didn't want to rush into it. After all, she knew that what she was about to do couldn't be done too often; she had to savour it, to make the most of it.

It didn't take Mokou long to pick up on Kaguya's body language : an arm draped over the edge of the sofa, the dress slipping off one shoulder, a fluttering of the eyelashes when Mokou finally locked eyes with her. This was another form of power she held over Mokou. Reciprocally, to an extent; Kaguya just tended to exert it more liberally, to better effect. Even without trying, her ability to seduce had gotten her into some trouble, back on Earth; now, she had had practice, and used it to her advantage, as a tool in her arsenal. Unlike her past suitors, there was no need to send Mokou off to hunt treasures that she'd never be able to find. Putting up with the princess for eternity was already the worst of all her impossible requests.

It didn't take long for clothing to start being removed, for their bodies to start pressing up against each other, for movement and friction to start being converted into pleasure. They knew each other as well as themselves, at this point. It was habitual, almost automatic, without feeling mechanical or bland. A pleasant blur; some time away from reality, some time together to merge on a physical level, as well.

They continued; the movements also created warmth, heating up both their bodies and the shared space between them. Kaguya knew she was playing with fire; a dangerous game, yet an exhilarating one. She was fuel, just waiting to explode : right now, with Mokou, it was like she was dangling a lit match right above the flammable liquid, just far enough that it wouldn't ignite, but close enough that it gave her a rush. Of course, the match was just a tool in this, unaware of the potential much larger reaction it could cause; all it could do was gnaw away at the short piece of wood it was comprised of. That seemed enough to it, that was its purpose. Only Kaguya had access to the bigger picture.

And yet it wouldn't be Mokou's fire that set off Kaguya's fuel this time. She held back, saved her explosion for later. She let Mokou burn herself out, she encouraged it, even. The match had been spent, served its purpose. It was content. Mokou let herself lie down on her back, breathing heavily. Ignorant of the larger reaction she could have caused, the one that Kaguya had denied her. Kaguya pretended to be satisfied; really, she was just putting herself on hold. She had patience, when she needed to. She had had plenty enough time to practice, after all.

"So, are you heading to the shower first ?" She asked Mokou. Really, she was suggesting it, telling her to do so, even. Mokou knew this, of course : if the Kaguya had wanted to shower first, she simply would have done so. So she left the princess to her own devices, leaving into the adjacent bathroom to their living quarters. The mechanical door slid closed behind her with a faint sound. Kaguya's lips curled into a grin. _Soon._

She waited a little longer, eventually walking up to the bathroom door. It was made of thick, solid metal, just like most things were on the Red Dwarf. _Built to last_. She put her ear to it : faintly, she could hear the sound of running water. She briefly considered walking away, leaving the room, leaving Mokou in peace. _Didn't she love Mokou ?_ But those thoughts deflected off her mind, unable to settle down. If she was truly capable of love, it would have been enough for her. But she wasn't, which it why it wasn't. Mokou deserved better, she knew that, she mourned that she hadn't gotten better, but right now and forever more, all Mokou had was Kaguya. _Poor Mokou._ And now, it was time.

A quick glance around the room was all it took her to find a computer terminal. The screen above it may have been broken in a demonstration of devotion towards Mokou, but the keyboard was still perfectly functional, was still capable of destroying that trust : it was still hooked up to the central AI. Kaguya had the power. She was in control, now. She was smiling with anticipation as she typed a short sequence of numbers into the keyboard. By themselves, they were meaningless, they didn't appear on any screen or cause any immediate action. But with Eirin, a meaning had been agreed upon, together. With Eirin's cooperation, Kaguya had more control than she had ever had before. Control over the entire Red Dwarf; truly, she was the goddess of their shared universe. A simple tool in Kaguya's ambitions such as Mokou had no hope to understand what had been planned for her.

A few seconds after the last key was pressed, it began. The lights all shut off, leaving Kaguya in the faint glow of the emergency exit signs; just enough light for her to navigate her way back over to the bathroom door, sitting with her back to it. Loud, metal clangs were ringing out throughout the ship : the doors were all slamming shut and locking. The Red Dwarf had entered emergency lockdown mode : the same mode it had been in for three million years, after the radiation leak.

And then, the reaction. She heard Mokou's footsteps approach the door on the other side, she heard her throw herself against it, hoping it was merely jammed. The early stages of panic, where disbelief starts slipping away between your fingers as you cling desperately to it, as to not be left only with despair.

Kaguya was destroying. This was an act of destruction; she had given Mokou peace to her body and mind, only to now be taking it away. Yet Mokou couldn't see who was breaking her peace; she couldn't see anything, plunged into the claustrophobic darkness that she had suffered in for so long. Kaguya was given a way to destroy, without being able to be held accountable for it. A crimeless victim.

Anger was now the primary emotion coming from behind the door. The bathroom was briefly lit up by Mokou's flames; Kaguya felt some heat against her back seeping through the metal. The anger was brief; it had been proven ineffective in the past, against the isolation Mokou had faced. Desperation followed.

"Let me out ! Open this fucking door !" Mokou was screaming, pounding her fists against the still searing-hot metal frame that was resurfacing so many traumatic memories. Kaguya felt a rush. This was pure sadism, she wasn't looking for any more lies to pretty it up, to pretend that it was anything else, to claim innocence. She had dropped her pretences when Eirin made her admit that all she cared about was not breaking the relationship, not Mokou herself. She was a terrible friend, lover, _person._ Right now, she didn't care. She was feeling an elation in her heart with each desperate shout, each pounding fist, a feeling that she wouldn't have traded for anything, no matter how vilifying she knew this was to her self-image. It was time for her to ignite.

Mokou's cries had become more pleading as hope had started to drain. The demands to be let out were now pleads for help; every _please_ made Kaguya's heart feel like it was about to burst with the indescribable feeling of elation her sadism brought her. She reached a hand down between her legs. It was time, time to strike a new match, flick it over and over, letting friction ignite it. It was always better when she lit the matches herself, when she held her own tools in her hands. _More control._ She was on fire, her heart racing, her ears bathed in the cries for help, cries that _she had caused_ , that she was _responsible for_. Mokou was breaking apart on the other side of the door; this was the consequence of Kaguya's actions, the result of her power over Mokou. This was the feeling she had been seeking : the feeling of control over Mokou, the knowledge that she could break her down if she so wished. The match was tantalisingly close to the fuel. _This was my influence. I caused this._

And then, finally, what she had been waiting for : her name. Mokou had started calling out specifically to Kaguya; no longer was she spouting out empty threats to the vague entity she held responsible for her imprisonment, she was now specifically imploring Kaguya to help her, to rescue her from the situation that Kaguya had orchestrated in the first place. Kaguya had the power to destroy, and still be heralded as a potential saviour, a final hope. This was the power she was seeking. This was what let her finally drop the match.

She ignited in an instant. The explosion she had been holding off all this time shook her body, travelling through her before finally escaping her mouth as a moan she couldn't quite contain. It left her shaking, having burnt away everything inside her but an unbridled bliss. She held that state for a while, a content smile on her face as she caught her breath, Mokou still screaming less than a metre away from her.

She had had her fun. She had caused an explosion, she had fractured eternity into another segment. She was content of her destruction; now, it was time for her to take credit as a saviour.

Leisurely, she got to her feet. Stretched. Took a few steps away from the door, creating plausible distance. Then, she did her best to sober herself up, to take a serious tone, one of worry (difficult, considering she was still tingling all over), before running back up to the door, shouting.

"Mokou ! it's ok, it's just a power outage ! I'm going to try to get you out, just hang on !" She could have laughed at her own hypocrisy, yet all Mokou heard was the voice of hope coming to deliver her from despair. Her desperate yelling double in intensity, imploring Kaguya to help her, to save her, to let her out. Kaguya had never seen Mokou let herself go to this extent before : there was no trace of the usual confident detachment Mokou liked to project. Trauma prevailed over pretences, it seemed.

Kaguya strolled over to the keyboard, stroking it gently once she arrived in front of it. Eirin could be useful, after all. She had been right to hold back on destroying all the screens, to hold back information from Mokou. _Aren't I smart ? Aren't I always proven right, in the end ?_ And yet, the time had come for her to stop playing with her food, to lift the pot from the stove, letting it cool down. She typed another short series of numbers, with another meaning agreed upon with Eirin. And thus they had communicated, silently and wordlessly; just the bare minimum for Eirin to know she had been an accomplice to Mokou's suffering, and just enough for Kaguya to hold Eirin as responsible.

Wave by wave, the doors released their grip and unlocked themselves, the lights came back on. The bathroom door opened, and Mokou fell out onto the floor, naked and wet with both shower water and tears. Kaguya rushed over to her, shouting _it worked;_ the bare minimum amount of context needed to place her as the saviour, the one responsible for freeing Mokou, who she knew would be too distressed to search for the _why_ or the _how._ She held the sobbing immortal in her arms, stroking her long, wet hair in a comforting gesture, muttering calming platitudes whilst Mokou thanked her over and over again in between wailing sobs. Kaguya was thankful that Mokou had buried her face against her dress : she was completely unable to hide the grin that had forced its way onto her face.

Hours passed, hours of comforting embraces and reassurance that _it was over now_. They had ended up in bed, and Mokou, exhausted from emotion, had given in to sleep, held between Kaguya's arms. Kaguya, too, was considering letting herself drift off, although she had been too busy congratulating herself on her success to do so yet. She was satisfied, at peace; she had gotten everything she wanted. She was awful, irredeemable, undeserving of any of the trust Mokou had placed in her. _So what ?_ She had enjoyed herself immensely, and gotten away with it, too. She was free from consequences; why _wouldn't_ she do what would bring her this much pleasure ? She closed her eyes : she didn't want to overstay her welcome in the realm of consciousness, not when things had been going so well. She felt herself start to drift off, escaping from her crimes into a restful sleep, free from the guilt and the consequences she ought to have had to deal with.

And then, she was shaken back into reality by a horribly loud noise. A tremor rocked the ship, the sound reverberating around the metal walls, stripping her of her relaxed state.

There had been an explosion somewhere in the ship.


End file.
